Carrier route record
OODEN→TYS
SkyWest Airlines · Denver to Knoxville
- Flights
- 393
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 41%
- 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 TYS lands a B, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 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 393 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on DEN to TYS from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 389 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.02%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.0%
Every carrier on DEN to TYS, 967 flights
These figures cover 393 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on DEN to TYS
SkyWest flew 393 of the 967 flights on DEN to TYS, about 41% of it. Its 76.1% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 81.0% to Allegiant at 70.8%. Four of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 336 | 81.0% | 48 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 129 | 80.6% | 63 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 393 | 76.1% | 64 min | 1.02% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 43 | 74.4% | 42 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| Allegiant Airthin sample | 66 | 70.8% | 174 min | 1.52% | C |
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on DEN to TYS
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 20 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am93 flights91.2%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm300 flights71.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 91.2% of the time, against 71.5% for the evening window. That is 20 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 300 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on DEN to TYS through the year
August is the worst month at 38.7% on time, 48 points below December, the best at 86.9%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 83.9% on time and Saturday the weakest at 67.3%. 17 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 5,983 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%National Airspace System
- 26%Carrier
- 9%Extreme weather
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 91.2% on time here. The split is drawn from 5,983 reported delay minutes.
No single cause dominates. late-arriving aircraft at 34%, national airspace system at 31% and carrier at 26% split the 5,983 reported delay minutes between them. An even spread like this usually means the operation is running close to its designed capacity with no one obvious weak point, and it is the hardest pattern for a traveller to route around.
Cancellations sit at 1.02% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,162 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 93.0% on time across 394 flights, 17 points above 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 17 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 393 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 TYS
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 393 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 76.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 389 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to TYS, every carrier
- SkyWest on TYS to DEN, the return leg
- United Airlines on DEN to TYS81.0%
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to TYS80.6%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.