Route reliability record
DEN→FSD
Denver to Sioux Falls
- Flights
- 1,831
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 483 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,831 DEN to FSD flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 1,307 at 84.7% on time.
Best time to fly DEN to FSD: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 84.7%, against 81.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 40 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,808 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.93%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
84.7% on time across 1,307 flights
These figures cover 1,831 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
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to FSD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 84.7% of the time; United Airlines manages 73.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 366 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,307 | 84.7% | 79 min | 1.07% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 158 | 75.3% | 72 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 366 | 73.1% | 103 min | 0.82% | C+ |
SkyWest leads United by 12 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on DEN to FSD
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Denver to Sioux Falls
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DEN → FSDDenver to Sioux Falls | SkyWest Airlines | 83.8% | 84.7% | 1.07% | 8am–11am, Mon | OO 4759 10:05 |
| 2. DEN → FSDDenver to Sioux Falls | United Airlines | 72.5% | 73.1% | 0.82% | 5pm–8pm, Sat | UA 645 17:50 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 24 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am10 flights—
- 8am–11am533 flights89.6%
- 11am–2pm429 flights85.9%
- 2pm–5pm113 flights65.5%
- 5pm–8pm383 flights72.9%
- 8pm–5am363 flights78.6%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 89.6% of the time, against 65.5% for the afternoon window. That is 24 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 533 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
August is the worst month at 71.0% on time, 20 points below October, the best at 91.3%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 197 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 76.5%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 28,000 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 14%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 28,264 reported delay minutes.
43% 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 28,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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.
Cancellations sit at 0.93% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.33%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.9% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 483 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.4% on time across 1,832 flights, 3 points below 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,831 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in FSD after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 91.3% on time and August 71.0%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,808 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to FSD questions
How often is DEN to FSD delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.4% of the 1,831 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to FSD?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 84.7% on time across 1,307 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 73.1%, a gap of 12 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DEN to FSD?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 89.6% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 65.5%, 24 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are August delays on DEN to FSD?
August is the weakest month at 71.0% on time, compared with 91.3% in October. Across the year that is 20 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- FSD to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to FSD84.7%
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to FSD75.3%
- United Airlines on DEN to FSD73.1%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- ORD to FSD, a related route63.3%
- DEN to SLC, a related route77.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record84.7%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record75.3%
- United Airlines on-time record73.1%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DEN to FSD and FSD to DEN are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.