Carrier route record
OODEN→LAX
SkyWest Airlines · Denver to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 1,231
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 16%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on DEN to LAX lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,231 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 3,064 at 84.5% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 84.5% on time across 3,064 flights.
Key figures
On time
80.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,219 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.81%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.0%
Every carrier on DEN to LAX, 7,721 flights
These figures cover 1,231 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% 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 LAX
SkyWest flew 1,231 of the 7,721 flights on DEN to LAX, about 16% of it. Its 80.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 79.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.5% to Southwest at 68.0%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 84.5% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 68.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,918 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 3,064 | 84.5% | 58 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 762 | 81.1% | 75 min | 0.52% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 746 | 80.5% | 89 min | 1.47% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 1,231 | 80.1% | 82 min | 0.81% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,918 | 68.0% | 49 min | 0.73% | C+ |
The spread between United and Southwest is 17 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 17 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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 30 points, against 17 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am210 flights85.6%
- 8am–11am3 flights—
- 11am–2pm464 flights87.4%
- 2pm–5pm28 flights—
- 5pm–8pm426 flights73.3%
- 8pm–5am100 flights57.1%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.1% on time, against 87.4% for the 11am–2pm slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 464 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on DEN to LAX through the year
June is the worst month at 65.0% on time, 24 points below November, the best at 88.7%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 156 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 76.0%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 58% of the 20,000 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.
- 58%Carrier
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 58%, 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 11,000 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 19,825 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.81%, 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
8.4% 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.
The 862 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 81.2% on time across 1,231 flights, within about a point 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 1,231 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 LAX
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 88.7% on time and June 65.0%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,219 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to LAX, every carrier
- SkyWest on LAX to DEN, the return leg
- United Airlines on DEN to LAX84.5%
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to LAX81.1%
- Delta Air Lines on DEN to LAX80.5%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to LAX68.0%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.