Route reliability record
DEN→MCI
Denver to Kansas City
- Flights
- 4,364
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 533 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B+, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 4,364 DEN to MCI flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 413 at 86.9% on time.
Best time to fly DEN to MCI: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 80.2%, against 76.5% for the route overall.
SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 86.9% on time across 413 flights.
Key figures
On time
76.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,337 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.41%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
86.9% on time across 413 flights
These figures cover 4,364 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.0% 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 MCI
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 86.9% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 72.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,363 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 413 | 86.9% | 63 min | 0.24% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 292 | 84.5% | 72 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 1,296 | 79.5% | 70 min | 0.31% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 2,363 | 72.0% | 57 min | 0.55% | C+ |
The spread between SkyWest and Southwest is 15 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 15 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Flights on DEN to MCI
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 Kansas City
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 → MCIDenver to Kansas City | SkyWest Airlines | 86.7% | 86.9% | 0.24% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. DEN → MCIDenver to Kansas City | United Airlines | 79.3% | 79.5% | 0.31% | 8am–11am, Tue | UA 2159 09:50 |
| 3. DEN → MCIDenver to Kansas City | Southwest Airlines | 71.6% | 72.0% | 0.55% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 35 points, against 15 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am293 flights95.9%
- 8am–11am1,181 flights90.1%
- 11am–2pm833 flights81.9%
- 2pm–5pm546 flights66.3%
- 5pm–8pm863 flights63.9%
- 8pm–5am648 flights61.1%
Scale runs 55% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.1% on time, against 95.9% 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 1,181 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DEN to MCI 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 MCI, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 95.9% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 61.1%, a wide gap of 34.8 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am95.9%
- 8–11am90.1%
- 11am–2pm81.9%
- 2–5pm66.3%
- 5–8pm63.9%
- 8pm–5am61.1%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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 68.2% on time, 19 points below November, the best at 87.6%. 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 439 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.2% on time and Thursday the weakest at 72.8%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 59% of the 63,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 59%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
59% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 63,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 23 to one. The split is drawn from 62,717 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 95.9% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.41%, 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
8.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 533 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.
The return leg runs 78.1% on time across 4,370 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 4,364 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 MCI 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 87.6% on time and August 68.2%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 4,337 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to MCI questions
How often is DEN to MCI delayed?
About 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 23.5% of the 4,364 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to MCI?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 86.9% on time across 413 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 72.0%, a gap of 15 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 MCI?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 61.1%, 35 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 MCI?
August is the weakest month at 68.2% on time, compared with 87.6% in November. Across the year that is 19 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
- MCI to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to MCI86.9%
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to MCI84.5%
- United Airlines on DEN to MCI79.5%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to MCI72.0%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.6%
- ORD to MCI, a related route70.9%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record86.9%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record84.5%
- United Airlines on-time record79.5%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DEN to MCI and MCI 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.