Carrier route record

OODEN→DRO

SkyWest Airlines · Denver to Durango

Flights: 1,460
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 67%
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 DRO lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six 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 1,460 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's DEN to DRO record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 44 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,432 completed flights

Avg delay

73 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.51%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.7%

Every carrier on DEN to DRO, 2,191 flights

These figures cover 1,460 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 DRO

SkyWest flew 1,460 of the 2,191 flights on DEN to DRO, most of the route. Its 82.0% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 82.0% to United at 75.1%.

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 DRO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	1,460	82.0%	73 min	1.51%	B
United Airlines	731	75.1%	59 min	0.41%	B+

Flight by flight

SkyWest flight numbers on DEN to DRO

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 14 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–11am504 flights90.0%
11am–2pm365 flights80.1%
2pm–5pm364 flights76.1%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am227 flights76.6%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.0% of the time, against 76.1% for the afternoon window. That is 14 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 504 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on DEN to DRO through the year

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

July is the worst month at 62.7% on time, 28 points below November, the best at 90.3%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 143 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 78.7%. 7 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 46% of the 19,000 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.

Carrier
46%
Late-arriving aircraft
34%
National Airspace System
13%
Extreme weather
7%

The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, 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 8,674 of the 19,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 18,827 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 90.0% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.51% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.41%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.4% 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.

At 251 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 80.1% on time across 1,461 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

The sample behind these figures is 1,460 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 DRO

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 90.3% on time and July 62.7%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,432 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