Carrier route record

OODEN→TUL

SkyWest Airlines · Denver to Tulsa

Flights: 1,129
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 46%
Carriers: 4

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

SkyWest on DEN to TUL 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,129 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 367 at 76.6% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's DEN to TUL record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 78 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,122 completed flights

Avg delay

69 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.62%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

76.1%

Every carrier on DEN to TUL, 2,432 flights

These figures cover 1,129 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 TUL

SkyWest flew 1,129 of the 2,432 flights on DEN to TUL, about 46% of it. Its 85.4% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 85.4% to Southwest at 64.1%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 76.6% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 64.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 893 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to TUL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	1,129	85.4%	69 min	0.62%	A+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	43	76.7%	74 min	0.00%	B+
United Airlines	367	76.6%	75 min	0.82%	B+
Southwest Airlines	893	64.1%	53 min	1.01%	D

The spread between United and Southwest is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

Flight by flight

SkyWest flight numbers on DEN to TUL

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 11 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am362 flights87.8%
11am–2pm357 flights89.8%
2pm–5pm47 flights83.0%
5pm–8pm1 flights—
8pm–5am362 flights78.9%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 89.8% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 78.9%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 362 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on DEN to TUL through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.October best, July worst

July is the worst month at 76.3% on time, 14 points below October, the best at 90.3%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 112 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 89.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 81.4%. 8 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 11,000 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
36%
Late-arriving aircraft
30%
Extreme weather
18%
National Airspace System
16%

Extreme weather accounts for 18% 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 2.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 11,239 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 4,015 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.62%, 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% 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 541 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 79.2% on time across 1,129 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 1,129 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 SkyWest on DEN to TUL

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 90.3% on time and July 76.3%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,122 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