Carrier route record
OODEN→MSO
SkyWest Airlines · Denver to Missoula
- Flights
- 474
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 39%
- 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 MSO 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 a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 474 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's DEN to MSO record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 49 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 469 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.63%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.5%
Every carrier on DEN to MSO, 1,214 flights
These figures cover 474 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
SkyWest against every carrier on DEN to MSO
SkyWest flew 474 of the 1,214 flights on DEN to MSO, about 39% of it. Its 82.5% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 85.7% to United at 79.0%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 22 | 85.7% | 58 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 474 | 82.5% | 74 min | 0.63% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 718 | 79.0% | 56 min | 0.14% | 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 474 flights.
- 5am–8am117 flights88.8%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm199 flights79.6%
- 2pm–5pm158 flights81.5%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 79.6% on time against 88.8% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 199 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on DEN to MSO through the year
September 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. July was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 95.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 75.0%. 21 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
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 6,071 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 13%Extreme weather
- 11%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 13% 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 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 6,071 reported delay minutes.
38% 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 6,071 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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.
Cancellations are rare at 0.63%, 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
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 last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 679 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 75.0% on time across 474 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. 474 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 MSO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 474 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 82.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 469 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to MSO, every carrier
- SkyWest on MSO to DEN, the return leg
- United Airlines on DEN to MSO79.0%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.