Carrier route record
OODEN→MKE
SkyWest Airlines · Denver to Milwaukee
- Flights
- 285
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 12%
- 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 MKE sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 285 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 741 at 80.5% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on DEN to MKE runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 46 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 282 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.35%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.3%
Every carrier on DEN to MKE, 2,339 flights
These figures cover 285 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.6% 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 MKE
SkyWest flew 285 of the 2,339 flights on DEN to MKE, about 12% of it. Its 73.0% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 86.7% to Southwest at 72.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 80.5% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 72.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,253 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 60 | 86.7% | 92 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 741 | 80.5% | 71 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 285 | 73.0% | 82 min | 0.35% | C+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,253 | 72.2% | 60 min | 0.64% | C+ |
United leads Southwest by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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 35 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm101 flights92.0%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm49 flights57.1%
- 8pm–5am135 flights64.7%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.1% on time, against 92.0% for the 11am–2pm 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 135 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on DEN to MKE through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025126 flights66.4%
- Oct–Dec 202524 flights—
- Apr–Jun 2026135 flights75.9%
Scale runs 60% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 73.0% on time across 285 flights.
Split by quarter, SkyWest on DEN to MKE logged 126 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 24 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 135 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 73.0% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 61.9%. 21 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 48% of the 6,233 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.
- 48%Carrier
- 25%National Airspace System
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, 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 2,981 of the 6,233 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 6,233 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.35%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 896 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 77.5% on time across 285 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 285 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 MKE
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 285 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 73.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 282 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to MKE, every carrier
- SkyWest on MKE to DEN, the return leg
- United Airlines on DEN to MKE80.5%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to MKE72.2%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.