Carrier route record

OODEN→FAT

SkyWest Airlines · Denver to Fresno

Flights: 749
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 52%
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 FAT 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 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 749 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's DEN to FAT record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 97 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

87.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 749 completed flights

Avg delay

65 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

81.0%

Every carrier on DEN to FAT, 1,453 flights

These figures cover 749 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 FAT

SkyWest flew 749 of the 1,453 flights on DEN to FAT, most of the route. Its 87.3% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 87.3% to United at 72.3%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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 FAT
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	749	87.3%	65 min	0.00%	A+
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	360	76.0%	41 min	0.28%	B+
United Airlinesthin sample	344	72.3%	57 min	0.29%	C+

Flight by flight

SkyWest flight numbers on DEN to FAT

OO 597815:4585.8% · 358 flights

Departure window

When SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 749 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm364 flights89.8%
2pm–5pm364 flights85.7%
5pm–8pm20 flights—
8pm–5am1 flights—

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 11am–2pm window is the strongest at 89.8% on time. The full set of windows spans 4 points.

Across the year

SkyWest on DEN to FAT through the year

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

December is the weak month at 73.7% on time, against 98.3% in November. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. December was the busiest month here, with 76 flights.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 91.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 85.0%. 6 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 6,143 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
39%
Late-arriving aircraft
24%
National Airspace System
22%
Extreme weather
15%

Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 6,143 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, 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 2,422 of the 6,143 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.6% 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 844 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 90.2% on time across 747 flights, within 3 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. 749 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 FAT

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 749 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 87.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 749 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