Carrier route record
OODEN→BOI
SkyWest Airlines · Denver to Boise
- Flights
- 874
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 29%
- 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 BOI 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 874 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 946 at 79.2% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on DEN to BOI from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 868 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.11%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.3%
Every carrier on DEN to BOI, 3,039 flights
These figures cover 874 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 BOI
SkyWest flew 874 of the 3,039 flights on DEN to BOI, about 29% of it. Its 78.7% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 79.2% to Southwest at 71.5%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 79.2% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 71.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,093 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 946 | 79.2% | 57 min | 0.32% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 874 | 78.7% | 71 min | 0.11% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 126 | 78.6% | 39 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,093 | 71.5% | 46 min | 0.18% | C+ |
United leads Southwest by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on DEN to BOI
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 25 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am189 flights92.5%
- 8am–11am46 flights91.3%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm274 flights80.7%
- 5pm–8pm67 flights73.1%
- 8pm–5am298 flights67.5%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.5% of the time, against 67.5% for the overnight window. That is 25 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 298 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on DEN to BOI through the year
July is the worst month at 51.6% on time, 40 points below February, the best at 91.7%. 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 93 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 72.3%. 15 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 13,000 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 13,217 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 92.5% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.11%, 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
7.6% 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 649 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 85.8% on time across 871 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 874 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 BOI
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 874 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 78.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 868 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to BOI, every carrier
- SkyWest on BOI to DEN, the return leg
- United Airlines on DEN to BOI79.2%
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to BOI78.6%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to BOI71.5%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.