Carrier route record

OODEN→MSP

SkyWest Airlines · Denver to Minneapolis

Flights: 244
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 4%
Carriers: 5

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

SkyWest on DEN to MSP earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 244 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,805 at 81.1% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's DEN to MSP record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 111 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

88.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 238 completed flights

Avg delay

78 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.46%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

77.6%

Every carrier on DEN to MSP, 5,848 flights

These figures cover 244 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 16 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 MSP

SkyWest flew 244 of the 5,848 flights on DEN to MSP, about 4% of it. Its 88.7% on time is 11 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 88.7% to Frontier at 71.7%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 81.1% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 71.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 618 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to MSP
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample	244	88.7%	78 min	2.46%	A
Delta Air Lines	1,805	81.1%	73 min	0.89%	B+
United Airlines	1,457	79.9%	68 min	0.34%	B+
Southwest Airlines	1,724	72.7%	50 min	0.58%	C+
Frontier Airlines	618	71.7%	62 min	0.49%	C+

Delta leads Frontier by 9 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 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 244 flights.

5am–8am43 flights86.8%
8am–11am5 flights—
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm2 flights—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am194 flights88.6%

Scale runs 80% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is the strongest at 88.6% on time. The full set of windows spans 2 points.

Across the year

SkyWest on DEN to MSP through the year

Jul–Sep 202556 flights80.4%
Oct–Dec 2025100 flights87.4%
Jan–Mar 202661 flights93.3%
Apr–Jun 202627 flights—

Scale runs 70% to 100%. 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 88.7% on time across 244 flights.

SkyWest on DEN to MSP did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 93.3% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 80.4%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 81 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 91.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.4%. 12 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. National Airspace System accounts for 48% of the 2,109 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.

National Airspace System
48%
Carrier
38%
Late-arriving aircraft
14%

The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 802 of the 2,109 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,109 reported delay minutes.

48% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,006 minutes out of 2,109, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations sit at 2.46% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.1% 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 680 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 runs 91.2% on time across 244 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 244 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 MSP

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 244 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 88.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 238 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