Carrier route record
OODEN→TUS
SkyWest Airlines · Denver to Tucson
- Flights
- 622
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 23%
- 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 TUS earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 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 622 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 836 at 80.6% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's DEN to TUS record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 67 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 619 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.48%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.1%
Every carrier on DEN to TUS, 2,755 flights
These figures cover 622 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 TUS
SkyWest flew 622 of the 2,755 flights on DEN to TUS, about 23% of it. Its 84.3% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 84.3% to Southwest at 70.6%. 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 80.6% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 70.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,202 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 622 | 84.3% | 76 min | 0.48% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 95 | 81.9% | 50 min | 1.05% | B |
| United Airlines | 836 | 80.6% | 57 min | 0.12% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,202 | 70.6% | 50 min | 0.42% | C+ |
United leads Southwest by 10 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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 29 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am202 flights87.0%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm64 flights89.1%
- 2pm–5pm283 flights87.6%
- 5pm–8pm71 flights60.0%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.0% on time, against 89.1% for the 11am–2pm 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 283 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on DEN to TUS through the year
July is the worst month at 53.3% on time, 44 points below October, the best at 97.3%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 91 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.7%. 12 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 7,400 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Carrier
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, 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 3,089 of the 7,400 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 7,400 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.48%, 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
6.1% 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 last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 639 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 86.5% on time across 621 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 622 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 TUS
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 622 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 84.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 619 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to TUS, every carrier
- SkyWest on TUS to DEN, the return leg
- United Airlines on DEN to TUS80.6%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to TUS70.6%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.