Carrier route record
OODEN→FSD
SkyWest Airlines · Denver to Sioux Falls
- Flights
- 1,307
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 71%
- 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 FSD earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 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 1,307 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's DEN to FSD record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 71 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,290 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.07%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.6%
Every carrier on DEN to FSD, 1,831 flights
These figures cover 1,307 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 FSD
SkyWest flew 1,307 of the 1,831 flights on DEN to FSD, most of the route. Its 84.7% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 84.7% to United at 73.1%. One 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 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+ |
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on DEN to FSD
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 19 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–8am10 flights—
- 8am–11am513 flights89.8%
- 11am–2pm363 flights85.8%
- 2pm–5pm61 flights70.7%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am360 flights78.7%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 89.8% of the time, against 70.7% for the afternoon window. That is 19 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 513 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on DEN to FSD through the year
August is the worst month at 73.8% on time, 23 points below October, the best at 96.5%. 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 144 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 88.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 81.1%. 7 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 16,000 reported delay minutes.
- 30%Carrier
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Extreme weather
- 21%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 21% 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 3.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 15,516 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.07% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.23%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.5% 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 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 81.9% on time across 1,308 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 1,307 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 FSD
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 96.5% on time and August 73.8%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,290 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to FSD, every carrier
- SkyWest on FSD to DEN, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to FSD75.3%
- United Airlines on DEN to FSD73.1%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.