Carrier route record

OODEN→COS

SkyWest Airlines · Denver to Colorado Springs

Flights: 3,283
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 65%
Carriers: 3

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

SkyWest on DEN to COS lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four 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 3,283 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 614 at 77.3% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on DEN to COS from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

76.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,218 completed flights

Avg delay

72 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.89%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.8%

Every carrier on DEN to COS, 5,039 flights

These figures cover 3,283 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.6% 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 COS

SkyWest flew 3,283 of the 5,039 flights on DEN to COS, most of the route. Its 76.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 75.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 77.3% to Southwest at 72.9%.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to COS
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	614	77.3%	69 min	0.98%	B+
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	3,283	76.5%	72 min	1.89%	B
Southwest Airlines	1,142	72.9%	54 min	0.44%	C+

No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 77.3%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

Flight by flight

SkyWest flight numbers on DEN to COS

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 20 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am149 flights85.2%
8am–11am565 flights82.6%
11am–2pm437 flights84.1%
2pm–5pm537 flights75.9%
5pm–8pm896 flights65.5%
8pm–5am699 flights79.5%

Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 85.2% of the time, against 65.5% for the evening window. That is 20 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 896 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on DEN to COS through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.November best, July worst

July is the worst month at 61.8% on time, 30 points below November, 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. December was the busiest month here, with 326 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 70.7%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

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 55,000 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
34%
Late-arriving aircraft
34%
National Airspace System
21%
Extreme weather
10%
Security
0%

The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, 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 19,000 of the 55,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 54,550 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 85.2% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.89% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.09%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

At 73 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.3% on time across 3,282 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 3,283 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.

What to do with this

Booking SkyWest on DEN to COS

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 91.7% on time and July 61.8%, a swing of 30 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 3,218 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