Carrier route record
OODEN→BIL
SkyWest Airlines · Denver to Billings
- Flights
- 1,052
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 59%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on DEN to BIL lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,052 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's DEN to BIL record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 41 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,034 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.24%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.6%
Every carrier on DEN to BIL, 1,782 flights
These figures cover 1,052 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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.
Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on DEN to BIL
SkyWest flew 1,052 of the 1,782 flights on DEN to BIL, most of the route. Its 81.7% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 81.7% to United at 76.6%.
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 1,052 | 81.7% | 52 min | 1.24% | B |
| United Airlines | 730 | 76.6% | 61 min | 0.00% | B+ |
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on DEN to BIL
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 13 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am361 flights87.9%
- 11am–2pm151 flights81.5%
- 2pm–5pm322 flights74.7%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am218 flights81.9%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 87.9% of the time, against 74.7% for the afternoon window. That is 13 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 361 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on DEN to BIL through the year
July is the worst month at 66.7% on time, 28 points below October, the best at 94.6%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 121 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 74.8%. 10 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 45% of the 9,725 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.
- 45%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, 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 4,381 of the 9,725 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 9,725 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 87.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.24% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.48%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 455 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 81.9% on time across 1,052 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,052 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 BIL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,052 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 81.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,034 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.