Route reliability record
DEN→RAP
Denver to Rapid City
- Flights
- 2,844
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 301 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 2,844 DEN to RAP flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 2,081 at 78.4% on time.
Best time to fly DEN to RAP: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 82.5%, against 77.7% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,809 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.95%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
78.4% on time across 2,081 flights
These figures cover 2,844 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to RAP
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 2,081 | 78.4% | 80 min | 1.25% | B |
| United Airlines | 763 | 75.9% | 73 min | 0.13% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 78.4%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on DEN to RAP
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Denver to Rapid City
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DEN → RAPDenver to Rapid City | SkyWest Airlines | 77.4% | 78.4% | 1.25% | 5am–8am, Tue | OO 5556 13:25 |
| 2. DEN → RAPDenver to Rapid City | United Airlines | 75.8% | 75.9% | 0.13% | 11am–2pm, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 26 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am61 flights95.0%
- 8am–11am512 flights82.0%
- 11am–2pm605 flights85.3%
- 2pm–5pm607 flights76.5%
- 5pm–8pm695 flights69.2%
- 8pm–5am364 flights74.2%
Scale runs 60% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 95.0% of the time, against 69.2% for the evening window. That is 26 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 695 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DEN to RAP by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On DEN to RAP, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 95.0% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 69.2%, a wide gap of 25.8 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am95.0%
- 8–11am82.0%
- 11am–2pm85.3%
- 2–5pm76.5%
- 5–8pm69.2%
- 8pm–5am74.2%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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.
August is the worst month at 64.7% on time, 26 points below November, the best at 90.7%. 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. September was the busiest month here, with 262 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 74.4%, a spread of 8 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 49,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 49,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. The split is drawn from 48,669 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 18,000 of the 49,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.95% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.5% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 301 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 80.5% on time across 2,844 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.
The sample behind these figures is 2,844 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in RAP after this flight
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 90.7% on time and August 64.7%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 2,809 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to RAP questions
How often is DEN to RAP delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.3% of the 2,844 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to RAP?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 78.4% on time across 2,081 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 75.9%, a gap of 3 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 RAP?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 69.2%, 26 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 August delays on DEN to RAP?
August is the weakest month at 64.7% on time, compared with 90.7% in November. Across the year that is 26 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
- RAP to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to RAP78.4%
- United Airlines on DEN to RAP75.9%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.6%
- DFW to RAP, a related route81.7%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record78.4%
- United Airlines on-time record75.9%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. DEN to RAP and RAP to DEN are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.