Route reliability record
DEN→LIT
Denver to Little Rock
- Flights
- 1,571
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 771 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B+, 2 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 1,571 DEN to LIT flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 1,048 at 81.1% on time.
Best time to fly DEN to LIT: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.7% of the time and Wednesday flights 83.3%, against 79.4% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,557 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.70%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
81.1% on time across 1,048 flights
These figures cover 1,571 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 LIT
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,048 | 81.1% | 88 min | 0.76% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 365 | 78.2% | 49 min | 0.55% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 116 | 75.7% | 94 min | 0.86% | B+ |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 42 | 59.5% | 63 min | 0.00% | D+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 81.1%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on DEN to LIT
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 Little Rock
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 → LITDenver to Little Rock | SkyWest Airlines | 80.5% | 81.1% | 0.76% | 11am–2pm, Wed | OO 5760 13:25 |
| 2. DEN → LITDenver to Little Rock | Southwest Airlines | 77.8% | 78.2% | 0.55% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
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 19 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am519 flights86.7%
- 11am–2pm512 flights83.7%
- 2pm–5pm150 flights69.1%
- 5pm–8pm387 flights68.0%
- 8pm–5am3 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 86.7% of the time, against 68.0% for the evening 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 519 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 34 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.
July is the worst month at 57.7% on time, 34 points below November, the best at 91.5%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 140 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.3% on time and Saturday the weakest at 77.3%. 6 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. Carrier accounts for 43% of the 24,000 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%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
35% 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 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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. The split is drawn from 24,477 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, 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 24,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.70%, 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 actually costs
7.5% 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.
The 771 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 77.3% on time across 1,570 flights, within 2 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 1,571 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 LIT 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. November runs 91.5% on time and July 57.7%, a swing of 34 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,557 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to LIT questions
How often is DEN to LIT delayed?
About 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 20.6% of the 1,571 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to LIT?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 81.1% on time across 1,048 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 78.2%, a gap of 3 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 LIT?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 86.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 68.0%, 19 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 July delays on DEN to LIT?
July is the weakest month at 57.7% on time, compared with 91.5% in November. Across the year that is 34 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
- LIT to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to LIT81.1%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to LIT78.2%
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to LIT75.7%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- DFW to LIT, a related route75.8%
- DEN to SLC, a related route77.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record81.1%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record78.2%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record75.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. DEN to LIT and LIT 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.