Route reliability record
DEN→FSD
Denver to Sioux Falls
- Flights
- 1,817
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 483 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. 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 rests on 1,817 DEN to FSD flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 1,313 at 85.5% on time.
Best time to fly DEN to FSD: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 85.3%, against 82.8% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 55 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,795 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.94%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
85.5% on time across 1,313 flights
These figures cover 1,817 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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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 85.5% of the time; United Airlines manages 75.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 365 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,313 | 85.5% | 78 min | 0.99% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 365 | 75.9% | 86 min | 1.10% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 139 | 74.8% | 77 min | 0.00% | C+ |
SkyWest leads United by 10 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.
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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 | 84.7% | 85.5% | 0.99% | 8am–11am, Mon | OO 4759 10:05 |
| 2. DEN → FSDDenver to Sioux Falls | United Airlines | 75.1% | 75.9% | 1.10% | 5pm–8pm, Tue | UA 645 17:28 |
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 20 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am45 flights84.4%
- 8am–11am487 flights90.1%
- 11am–2pm411 flights87.0%
- 2pm–5pm126 flights70.2%
- 5pm–8pm386 flights74.9%
- 8pm–5am362 flights80.6%
Scale runs 60% to 95%.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.1% of the time, against 70.2% for the afternoon 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 487 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DEN to FSD by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On DEN to FSD, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 90.1% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 70.2%, a wide gap of 19.9 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am84.4%
- 8–11am90.1%
- 11am–2pm87.0%
- 2–5pm70.2%
- 5–8pm74.9%
- 8pm–5am80.6%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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.
December is the weak month at 73.2% on time, against 91.3% in October. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 185 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.3% on time and Thursday the weakest at 79.8%, a spread of 6 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 25,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 15%Extreme weather
- 13%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
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 2.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 24,697 reported delay minutes.
43% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations sit at 0.94% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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 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 runs 80.2% on time across 1,818 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,817 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 December 73.2%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,795 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to FSD questions
How often is DEN to FSD delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.2% of the 1,817 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to FSD?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 85.5% on time across 1,313 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 75.9%, a gap of 10 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 90.1% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 70.2%, 20 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 December delays on DEN to FSD?
December is the weakest month at 73.2% on time, compared with 91.3% in October. Across the year that is 18 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 FSD85.5%
- United Airlines on DEN to FSD75.9%
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to FSD74.8%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.6%
- ORD to FSD, a related route63.5%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record85.5%
- United Airlines on-time record75.9%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record74.8%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.