Carrier route record

OODEN→DSM

SkyWest Airlines · Denver to Des Moines

Flights: 936
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 40%
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 DSM earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 936 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 681 at 79.1% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's DEN to DSM record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 106 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

88.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 924 completed flights

Avg delay

71 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.07%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.9%

Every carrier on DEN to DSM, 2,329 flights

These figures cover 936 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 DSM

SkyWest flew 936 of the 2,329 flights on DEN to DSM, about 40% of it. Its 88.2% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 88.2% to Southwest at 67.2%. 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 79.1% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 67.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 559 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to DSM
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	936	88.2%	71 min	1.07%	A
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	153	79.7%	58 min	0.00%	B+
United Airlines	681	79.1%	74 min	0.15%	B+
Southwest Airlines	559	67.2%	64 min	0.36%	C+

United leads Southwest by 12 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

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 12 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am79 flights94.9%
8am–11am414 flights91.0%
11am–2pm85 flights89.3%
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am358 flights83.1%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.9% of the time, against 83.1% for the overnight window. That is 12 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 414 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on DEN to DSM through the year

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

July is the worst month at 81.7% on time, 15 points below October, the best at 96.4%. 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 95 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 91.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 83.5%. 8 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 48% of the 7,780 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
48%
Late-arriving aircraft
25%
National Airspace System
15%
Extreme weather
12%

Extreme weather accounts for 12% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 7,780 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, 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 3,739 of the 7,780 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.07% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.21%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.8% 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.

The 589 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 runs 90.0% on time across 936 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.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 936 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 DSM

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 936 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 88.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 924 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