Route reliability record
DEN→LNK
Denver to Lincoln
- Flights
- 1,585
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 423 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 1,585 DEN to LNK flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly DEN to LNK: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 83.7%, against 77.1% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
77.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,560 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.69%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
77.1% on time across 1,585 flights
These figures cover 1,585 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to LNK
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 | 1,585 | 77.1% | 82 min | 0.69% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on DEN to LNK
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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Denver to Lincoln
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DEN → OMADenver to Omaha | SkyWest Airlines | 87.8% | 88.4% | 0.71% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. DEN → OMADenver to Omaha | United Airlines | 77.9% | 78.1% | 0.23% | 11am–2pm, Tue | UA 2327 13:50 |
| 3. DEN → LNKDenver to Lincoln | SkyWest Airlines | 76.6% | 77.1% | 0.69% | 5am–8am, Tue | OO 5831 09:40 |
| 4. DEN → OMADenver to Omaha | Southwest Airlines | 73.3% | 73.6% | 0.36% | 5am–8am, 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 29 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am111 flights91.7%
- 8am–11am385 flights86.1%
- 11am–2pm222 flights81.5%
- 2pm–5pm141 flights89.1%
- 5pm–8pm363 flights62.9%
- 8pm–5am363 flights70.1%
Scale runs 55% to 95%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.9% on time, against 91.7% for the 5am–8am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 385 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DEN to LNK by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On DEN to LNK, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 91.7% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 62.9%, a wide gap of 28.8 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am91.7%
- 8–11am86.1%
- 11am–2pm81.5%
- 2–5pm89.1%
- 5–8pm62.9%
- 8pm–5am70.1%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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.
August is the worst month at 65.5% on time, 20 points below November, the best at 85.8%. 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 149 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 72.1%, a spread of 12 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 29,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Carrier
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 29,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. The split is drawn from 29,163 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 11,000 of the 29,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.69%, below the national 1.89% 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
9.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 423 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.1% on time across 1,588 flights, 3 points above 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,585 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 LNK 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 85.8% on time and August 65.5%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,560 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to LNK questions
How often is DEN to LNK delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.9% of the 1,585 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is DEN to LNK compared with the rest of the country?
77.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of half a point against it. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DEN to LNK?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 62.9%, 29 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 August delays on DEN to LNK?
August is the weakest month at 65.5% on time, compared with 85.8% in November. Across the year that is 20 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
- LNK to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.6%
- ORD to LNK, a related route61.3%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record77.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. DEN to LNK and LNK 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.