Carrier route record

OODEN→HDN

SkyWest Airlines · Denver to Hayden

Flights: 264
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 19%
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 HDN sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 264 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 431 at 74.6% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on DEN to HDN runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 47 extra late arrivals.

On time

72.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 262 completed flights

Avg delay

72 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.38%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.1%

Every carrier on DEN to HDN, 1,427 flights

These figures cover 264 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Carrier by carrier

SkyWest against every carrier on DEN to HDN

SkyWest flew 264 of the 1,427 flights on DEN to HDN, about 19% of it. Its 72.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 74.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 74.6% to SkyWest at 72.9%.

The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to HDN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines	431	74.6%	60 min	0.23%	C+
United Airlines	732	74.3%	78 min	0.55%	C+
SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample	264	72.9%	72 min	0.38%	C+

No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 74.6%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

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 14 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–8am—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm127 flights80.3%
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm137 flights65.9%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 80.3% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 65.9%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 137 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on DEN to HDN through the year

Jul–Sep 2025164 flights69.3%
Oct–Dec 202559 flights81.0%
Apr–Jun 202641 flights75.6%

Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 72.9% on time across 264 flights.

SkyWest on DEN to HDN did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 81.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 69.3%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 88 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 77.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 65.8%. 12 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 5,076 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
36%
Late-arriving aircraft
23%
Carrier
21%
Extreme weather
19%
Security
1%

Extreme weather accounts for 19% 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 3.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 5,076 reported delay minutes.

36% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,823 minutes out of 5,076, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.38%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

At 141 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 73.4% on time across 265 flights, within half a point 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. 264 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 HDN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 264 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 72.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 262 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