Carrier route record

OODEN→MSN

SkyWest Airlines · Denver to Madison

Flights: 206
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 19%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.

SkyWest on DEN to MSN lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 40 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 206 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's DEN to MSN record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 48 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 204 completed flights

Avg delay

39 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.49%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.2%

Every carrier on DEN to MSN, 1,077 flights

These figures cover 206 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

SkyWest against every carrier on DEN to MSN

SkyWest flew 206 of the 1,077 flights on DEN to MSN, about 19% of it. Its 82.4% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 82.4% to Frontier at 78.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to MSN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample	206	82.4%	39 min	0.49%	B+
United Airlines	729	80.0%	62 min	0.55%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	142	78.0%	66 min	0.70%	B+

Departure window

When SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 206 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split SkyWest's DEN to MSN record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 82.4% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

SkyWest on DEN to MSN through the year

Jul–Sep 202569 flights85.3%
Oct–Dec 202544 flights90.9%
Apr–Jun 202693 flights76.1%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. 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 82.4% on time across 206 flights.

SkyWest on DEN to MSN did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 90.9% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 76.1%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 69 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 94.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.0%. 19 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 52% of the 1,397 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.

Carrier
52%
Late-arriving aircraft
21%
National Airspace System
16%
Extreme weather
11%

The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, 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 731 of the 1,397 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,397 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.49%, 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.4% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

The 826 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 74.1% on time across 203 flights, 8 points below 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 8 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 206 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 MSN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 206 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 82.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 204 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures