Route reliability record
DEN→XNA
Denver to Bentonville
- Flights
- 1,281
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 616 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five 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 1,281 DEN to XNA flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 766 at 84.1% on time.
Best time to fly DEN to XNA: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Monday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.7% of the time and Monday flights 81.8%, against 80.7% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
80.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,274 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.55%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
84.1% on time across 766 flights
These figures cover 1,281 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 XNA
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 84.1% of the time; United Airlines manages 72.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 370 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 766 | 84.1% | 56 min | 0.65% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 145 | 83.4% | 61 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 370 | 72.6% | 73 min | 0.54% | C+ |
SkyWest leads United by 12 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on DEN to XNA
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Denver to Bentonville
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 → XNADenver to Bentonville | SkyWest Airlines | 83.6% | 84.1% | 0.65% | 11am–2pm, Mon | OO 5641 13:30 |
| 2. DEN → XNADenver to Bentonville | United Airlines | 72.2% | 72.6% | 0.54% | 5pm–8pm, Mon | — |
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 22 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am388 flights84.9%
- 11am–2pm400 flights85.7%
- 2pm–5pm85 flights81.2%
- 5pm–8pm364 flights72.7%
- 8pm–5am44 flights63.6%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.6% on time, against 85.7% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 400 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 31 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 64.2% on time, 31 points below April, the best at 94.7%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 137 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 81.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 77.7%. 4 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 42% of the 16,000 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.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
42% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 15,603 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, 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 5,363 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, 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
6.7% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 616 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 79.2% on time across 1,280 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 1,281 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 XNA 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. April runs 94.7% on time and July 64.2%, a swing of 31 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,274 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to XNA questions
How often is DEN to XNA delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.3% of the 1,281 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 XNA?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 84.1% on time across 766 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 72.6%, 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 XNA?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 85.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 63.6%, 22 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 XNA?
July is the weakest month at 64.2% on time, compared with 94.7% in April. Across the year that is 31 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
- XNA to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to XNA84.1%
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to XNA83.4%
- United Airlines on DEN to XNA72.6%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- DFW to XNA, a related route78.2%
- DEN to SLC, a related route77.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record84.1%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record83.4%
- United Airlines on-time record72.6%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DEN to XNA and XNA to DEN are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed DEN to XNA’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.