Route reliability record
FSD→DEN
Sioux Falls to Denver
- Flights
- 1,832
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 483 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, about a point 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 an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,832 FSD to DEN flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 1,308 at 81.9% on time.
Best time to fly FSD to DEN: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 81.4%, against 78.4% 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
78.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,802 completed flights
Avg delay
92 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.36%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
81.9% on time across 1,308 flights
These figures cover 1,832 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
Which airline is most reliable on FSD to DEN
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 81.9% of the time; United Airlines manages 69.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 366 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,308 | 81.9% | 105 min | 1.45% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 158 | 70.3% | 97 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| United Airlines | 366 | 69.7% | 62 min | 1.64% | C |
The spread between SkyWest and United is 12 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 12 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Flights on FSD to DEN
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 Sioux Falls to Denver
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. FSD → DENSioux Falls to Denver | SkyWest Airlines | 80.7% | 81.9% | 1.45% | 11am–2pm, Tue | OO 5701 06:00 |
| 2. FSD → DENSioux Falls to Denver | United Airlines | 68.6% | 69.7% | 1.64% | 8am–11am, Sun | — |
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 30 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am362 flights90.4%
- 8am–11am365 flights69.6%
- 11am–2pm373 flights92.5%
- 2pm–5pm236 flights82.1%
- 5pm–8pm461 flights62.9%
- 8pm–5am35 flights71.4%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.9% on time, against 92.5% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 461 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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 64.4% on time, 26 points below February, the best at 90.8%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 197 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.4% on time and Saturday the weakest at 76.6%. 5 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 36,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Carrier
- 30%National Airspace System
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 13% 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 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 35,744 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 12,000 of the 36,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.36% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.27%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually 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.
At 483 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.6% on time across 1,831 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,832 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 DEN 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. February runs 90.8% on time and July 64.4%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,802 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FSD to DEN questions
How often is FSD to DEN 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 21.6% of the 1,832 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on FSD to DEN?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 81.9% on time across 1,308 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 69.7%, 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 FSD to DEN?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 92.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 62.9%, 30 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 FSD to DEN?
July is the weakest month at 64.4% on time, compared with 90.8% in February. Across the year that is 26 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
- DEN to FSD — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on FSD to DEN81.9%
- Frontier Airlines on FSD to DEN70.3%
- United Airlines on FSD to DEN69.7%
- FSD to ORD, a related route67.6%
- PHX to DEN, a related route77.2%
- FSD to MSP, a related route84.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record81.9%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record70.3%
- United Airlines on-time record69.7%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. FSD to DEN and DEN to FSD are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed FSD to DEN’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.