Route reliability record
DEN→OKC
Denver to Oklahoma City
- Flights
- 3,164
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 495 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 3,164 flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 1,256 at 82.4% on time.
SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 82.4% on time across 1,256 flights.
Key figures
On time
77.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,137 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.66%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
82.4% on time across 1,256 flights
These figures cover 3,164 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to OKC
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 82.4% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 70.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,223 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,256 | 82.4% | 68 min | 0.48% | B+ |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 319 | 80.4% | 62 min | 0.63% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 366 | 75.3% | 67 min | 0.82% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,223 | 70.9% | 55 min | 0.82% | C+ |
SkyWest leads Southwest by 12 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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 24 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am54 flights83.3%
- 8am–11am788 flights88.9%
- 11am–2pm609 flights84.1%
- 2pm–5pm360 flights76.1%
- 5pm–8pm836 flights67.9%
- 8pm–5am517 flights64.6%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 64.6% on time, against 88.9% for the 8am–11am 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 836 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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.
July is the worst month at 64.0% on time, 24 points below November, the best at 87.6%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 321 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 82.2% on time and Thursday the weakest at 72.7%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 44,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
48% 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 44,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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. The split is drawn from 43,918 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 88.9% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.66%, 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 actually costs
7.6% 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 are the about an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 495 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 79.2% on time across 3,167 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 3,164 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 87.6% on time and July 64.0%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 3,137 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to OKC questions
How often is DEN to OKC delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 23.0% of the 3,164 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to OKC?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 82.4% on time across 1,256 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 70.9%, a gap of 12 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DEN to OKC?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 88.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 64.6%, 24 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 July delays on DEN to OKC?
July is the weakest month at 64.0% on time, compared with 87.6% in November. Across the year that is 24 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
- OKC to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record82.4%
- United Airlines on-time record80.4%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record75.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. DEN to OKC and OKC to DEN are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.