Carrier route record

OODEN→BHM

SkyWest Airlines · Denver to Birmingham

Flights: 604
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 49%
Carriers: 3

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

SkyWest on DEN to BHM lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. 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 rests on 604 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on DEN to BHM from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

79.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 602 completed flights

Avg delay

78 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.33%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

72.5%

Every carrier on DEN to BHM, 1,236 flights

These figures cover 604 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

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Carrier by carrier

SkyWest against every carrier on DEN to BHM

SkyWest flew 604 of the 1,236 flights on DEN to BHM, about 49% of it. Its 79.2% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 79.2% to Southwest at 63.3%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to BHM
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	604	79.2%	78 min	0.33%	B+
United Airlinesthin sample	123	77.2%	56 min	0.00%	B+
Southwest Airlines	509	63.3%	63 min	0.39%	D+

Flight by flight

SkyWest flight numbers on DEN to BHM

OO 581517:3078.8% · 307 flights

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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 18 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am—
8am–11am209 flights82.2%
11am–2pm32 flights93.8%
2pm–5pm5 flights—
5pm–8pm358 flights75.9%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 93.8% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 75.9%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 358 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on DEN to BHM through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.January best, August worst

August is the worst month at 54.8% on time, 34 points below January, the best at 88.7%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 72.6%, a spread of 14 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late SkyWest on DEN to BHM runs when it is late

SkyWest on DEN to BHM often beats the schedule: 241 of 602 completed flights, 40%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 125 late arrivals split 44 under half an hour, 45 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 36 an hour or more.

15+ min early241 flights40.0%
Within 15 min236 flights39.2%
15–29 min late44 flights7.3%
30–59 min late45 flights7.5%
1–2 hours late17 flights2.8%
2+ hours late19 flights3.2%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 602 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

29 of 118 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 25% of them. In the other direction, 36 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at BHM.

The worst days

Worst days for SkyWest on DEN to BHM

The latest arrival of the period was on 23 August 2026, 14 hours 40 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. Three of the five worst days fell in August 2026.

The latest arrivals of SkyWest on DEN to BHM in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
23 August 2026	14 hours 40 minutes	National Airspace System
8 August 2026	13 hours 42 minutes	National Airspace System
7 November 2025	11 hours 56 minutes	Carrier
21 June 2026	4 hours 35 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
13 August 2026	4 hours 27 minutes	National Airspace System

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 9,723 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
39%
National Airspace System
34%
Late-arriving aircraft
20%
Extreme weather
6%

34% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 3,332 minutes out of 9,723, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 9,723 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,808 of the 9,723 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.33%, below the national 1.89% 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

6.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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 1,083 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.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 90.0% on time across 604 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 604 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 BHM

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 604 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 79.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 602 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures