Route reliability record
DEN→XNA
Denver to Bentonville
- Flights
- 1,346
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 616 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 1,346 DEN to XNA flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 826 at 84.5% on time.
Best time to fly DEN to XNA: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.0% of the time and Saturday flights 85.6%, against 82.0% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 47 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,339 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.52%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
84.5% on time across 826 flights
These figures cover 1,346 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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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 84.5% of the time; United Airlines manages 75.9%. 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 | 826 | 84.5% | 61 min | 0.73% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 150 | 83.3% | 54 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 370 | 75.9% | 74 min | 0.27% | B+ |
SkyWest leads United by 9 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.
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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 | 83.9% | 84.5% | 0.73% | 11am–2pm, Sat | OO 5641 13:30 |
| 2. DEN → XNADenver to Bentonville | United Airlines | 75.7% | 75.9% | 0.27% | 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 19 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am419 flights85.8%
- 11am–2pm402 flights87.0%
- 2pm–5pm57 flights82.5%
- 5pm–8pm363 flights76.0%
- 8pm–5am105 flights68.3%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 87.0% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 68.3%. 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 419 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DEN to XNA 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 XNA, the best departure window is 11am–2pm at 87.0% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 68.3%, a wide gap of 18.7 points. All US flights leaving 11am–2pm ran 78.3%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am85.8%
- 11am–2pm87.0%
- 2–5pm82.5%
- 5–8pm76.0%
- 8pm–5am68.3%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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.
June is the worst month at 73.0% on time, 22 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. August was the busiest month here, with 140 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 85.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 78.5%, a spread of 7 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 16,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 15,683 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 5,368 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.52%, below the national 1.89% 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
6.9% 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 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.
The return leg runs 81.5% on time across 1,345 flights, within half a point 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 1,346 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 June 73.0%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,339 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 six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.0% of the 1,346 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to XNA?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 84.5% on time across 826 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 75.9%, a gap of 9 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 87.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 68.3%, 19 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 June delays on DEN to XNA?
June is the weakest month at 73.0% on time, compared with 94.7% in April. Across the year that is 22 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 XNA84.5%
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to XNA83.3%
- United Airlines on DEN to XNA75.9%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.6%
- DFW to XNA, a related route77.9%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record84.5%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record83.3%
- 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 XNA and XNA 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.