Route reliability record
DEN→MOT
Denver to Minot
- Flights
- 1,055
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 604 mi
- Carriers
- 1
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 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 1,055 DEN to MOT flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly DEN to MOT: a 2pm–5pm departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.7% of the time and Thursday flights 79.1%, against 75.6% 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
75.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,039 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.14%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
75.6% on time across 1,055 flights
These figures cover 1,055 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.4% 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 MOT
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 | 1,055 | 75.6% | 83 min | 1.14% | B |
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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 26 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am21 flights—
- 8am–11am156 flights81.3%
- 11am–2pm335 flights77.7%
- 2pm–5pm95 flights85.7%
- 5pm–8pm182 flights59.8%
- 8pm–5am266 flights74.7%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.8% on time, against 85.7% for the 2pm–5pm 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 335 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DEN to MOT 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 MOT, the best departure window is 2pm–5pm at 85.7% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 59.8%, a wide gap of 25.9 points. All US flights leaving 2pm–5pm ran 71.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am81.3%
- 11am–2pm77.7%
- 2–5pm85.7%
- 5–8pm59.8%
- 8pm–5am74.7%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 34 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.
November is the best month on the calendar at 93.8% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. September was the busiest month here, with 130 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 79.1% on time and Saturday the weakest at 67.2%, 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 21,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Carrier
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%National Airspace System
- 17%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 17% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 21,153 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 8,165 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.14% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.38%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
9.4% 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.
The 604 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.0% on time across 1,056 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,055 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MOT after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,055 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 75.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,039 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to MOT questions
How often is DEN to MOT 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 24.4% of the 1,055 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is DEN to MOT compared with the rest of the country?
75.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 2 points against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DEN to MOT?
The 2pm–5pm departure window is the strongest at 85.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 59.8%, 26 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 March delays on DEN to MOT?
March is the weakest month at 60.0% on time, compared with 93.8% in November. Across the year that is 34 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
- MOT to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.6%
- MSP to MOT, a related route78.5%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record75.6%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. DEN to MOT and MOT 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.