Carrier route record
OODEN→LIT
SkyWest Airlines · Denver to Little Rock
- Flights
- 1,048
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 67%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on DEN to LIT lands a B+, 4 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 an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,048 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on DEN to LIT from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
81.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,037 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.76%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.4%
Every carrier on DEN to LIT, 1,571 flights
These figures cover 1,048 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.1% 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 LIT
SkyWest flew 1,048 of the 1,571 flights on DEN to LIT, most of the route. Its 81.1% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 81.1% to United at 59.5%. Two 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) | 1,048 | 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+ |
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on DEN to LIT
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 17 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–11am361 flights85.3%
- 11am–2pm363 flights86.7%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm321 flights70.0%
- 8pm–5am3 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 86.7% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 70.0%. 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 363 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on DEN to LIT through the year
August is the worst month at 64.8% on time, 30 points below June, the best at 95.0%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.7% on time and Saturday the weakest at 77.8%. 7 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 45% of the 17,000 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.
- 45%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, 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 7,745 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 17,264 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.76%, 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
8.1% 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 an hour and a half, 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.7% on time across 1,048 flights, 5 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,048 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 LIT
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,048 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 81.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,037 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to LIT, every carrier
- SkyWest on LIT to DEN, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to LIT78.2%
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to LIT75.7%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
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.