Carrier route record
OODEN→MSO
SkyWest Airlines · Denver to Missoula
- Flights
- 473
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 39%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on DEN to MSO earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 473 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's DEN to MSO record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 77 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 468 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.63%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
81.5%
Every carrier on DEN to MSO, 1,198 flights
These figures cover 473 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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.
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Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on DEN to MSO
SkyWest flew 473 of the 1,198 flights on DEN to MSO, about 39% of it. Its 85.0% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 85.0% to Frontier at 75.0%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 473 | 85.0% | 68 min | 0.63% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 717 | 79.2% | 52 min | 0.14% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 8 | 75.0% | 49 min | 0.00% | B+ |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 14 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am117 flights94.0%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm199 flights79.6%
- 2pm–5pm157 flights85.3%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 100%. 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 94.0% 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. August was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 93.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 79.4%, a spread of 14 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late SkyWest on DEN to MSO runs when it is late
SkyWest on DEN to MSO often beats the schedule: 158 of 468 completed flights, 34%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 70 late arrivals split 19 under half an hour, 22 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 29 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early158 flights33.8%
- Within 15 min240 flights51.3%
- 15–29 min late19 flights4.1%
- 30–59 min late22 flights4.7%
- 1–2 hours late20 flights4.3%
- 2+ hours late9 flights1.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 468 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
8 of 66 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 12% of them. 12 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for SkyWest on DEN to MSO
The latest arrival of the period was on 25 January 2026, 5 hours 56 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 25 January 2026 | 5 hours 56 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 December 2025 | 4 hours 43 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 6 March 2026 | 4 hours 18 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 18 December 2025 | 3 hours 26 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 1 June 2026 | 2 hours 51 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
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 4,754 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 4,754 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 4,754 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,776 of the 4,754 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.63%, below the national 1.89% 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
6.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.0% on time across 473 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 473 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. 473 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 85.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 468 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 MSO79.2%
- 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 7.05 million flight records
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.