Carrier route record

OODEN→AUS

SkyWest Airlines · Denver to Austin

Flights: 491
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 9%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.

SkyWest on DEN to AUS lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 491 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,914 at 79.9% on time.

United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 79.9% on time across 1,914 flights.

On time

78.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 488 completed flights

Avg delay

80 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.61%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

76.1%

Every carrier on DEN to AUS, 5,301 flights

These figures cover 491 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Carrier by carrier

SkyWest against every carrier on DEN to AUS

SkyWest flew 491 of the 5,301 flights on DEN to AUS, about 9% of it. Its 78.5% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 79.9% to Frontier at 72.3%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 79.9% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 72.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 550 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to AUS
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	1,914	79.9%	64 min	0.63%	B+
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	491	78.5%	80 min	0.61%	B+
Southwest Airlines	2,346	73.5%	56 min	0.55%	C+
Frontier Airlines	550	72.3%	63 min	0.73%	C+

United leads Frontier by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

Departure window

When SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 11 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am237 flights82.6%
11am–2pm1 flights—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm189 flights71.8%
8pm–5am64 flights82.5%

Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 82.6% of the time, against 71.8% for the evening window. That is 11 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 237 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on DEN to AUS through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.February best, June worst

June is the worst month at 53.3% on time, 38 points below February, the best at 91.1%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. December was the busiest month here, with 76 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 89.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 72.6%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 56% of the 8,392 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Carrier
56%
Extreme weather
20%
National Airspace System
14%
Late-arriving aircraft
10%

Extreme weather accounts for 20% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 3.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 8,392 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 56%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 4,704 of the 8,392 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.61%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

8.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 775 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.5% on time across 490 flights, 3 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 3 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 491 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking SkyWest on DEN to AUS

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 491 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 78.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 488 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures