Route reliability record

DEN→MCI

Denver to Kansas City

Flights: 4,269
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 533 mi
Carriers: 4

This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 4,269 flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 373 at 89.2% on time.

SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 89.2% on time across 373 flights.

On time

75.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,246 completed flights

Avg delay

60 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.40%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

SkyWest

89.2% on time across 373 flights

These figures cover 4,269 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

Which airline is most reliable on DEN to MCI

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 89.2% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 71.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,338 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to MCI
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	373	89.2%	58 min	0.27%	A+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	261	81.5%	68 min	0.00%	B+
United Airlines	1,297	78.2%	66 min	0.39%	B+
Southwest Airlines	2,338	71.1%	56 min	0.47%	C+

The spread between SkyWest and Southwest is 18 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 18 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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 34 points, against 18 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am313 flights94.2%
8am–11am1,142 flights89.3%
11am–2pm804 flights80.6%
2pm–5pm513 flights65.2%
5pm–8pm841 flights62.7%
8pm–5am656 flights60.6%

Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 60.6% on time, against 94.2% 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 1,142 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 26 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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.November best, July worst

July is the worst month at 61.7% on time, 26 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. June was the busiest month here, with 419 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 78.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 71.1%. 8 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 58% of the 62,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
58%
Carrier
28%
National Airspace System
12%
Extreme weather
2%
Security
0%

58% 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 62,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 29 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 61,945 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 94.2% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.40%, 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

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 are the about an hour kind, 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. 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 76.1% on time across 4,274 flights, within half 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 4,269 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 this route

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 87.6% on time and July 61.7%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 4,246 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 arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 24.5% of the 4,269 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.

Which airline is most reliable on DEN to MCI?

SkyWest Airlines leads at 89.2% on time across 373 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 71.1%, a gap of 18 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 94.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 60.6%, 34 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 MCI?

July is the weakest month at 61.7% on time, compared with 87.6% in November. Across the year that is 26 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

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.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures