Carrier route record

OOFSD→DEN

SkyWest Airlines · Sioux Falls to Denver

Flights: 1,308
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 71%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.

SkyWest on FSD to DEN lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,308 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's FSD to DEN record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 43 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

81.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,284 completed flights

Avg delay

105 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.45%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.4%

Every carrier on FSD to DEN, 1,832 flights

These figures cover 1,308 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.1% 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 FSD to DEN

SkyWest flew 1,308 of the 1,832 flights on FSD to DEN, most of the route. Its 81.9% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 81.9% to United at 69.7%. One 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.

On-time performance by carrier on FSD to DEN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	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

Flight by flight

SkyWest flight numbers on FSD to DEN

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 28 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–8am361 flights90.4%
8am–11am1 flights—
11am–2pm370 flights92.4%
2pm–5pm152 flights84.7%
5pm–8pm424 flights64.0%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.0% on time, against 92.4% 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 424 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on FSD to DEN through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.February best, July worst

July is the worst month at 70.3% on time, 24 points below February, the best at 93.8%. 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 144 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.3% on time and Saturday the weakest at 78.6%. 7 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 24,000 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
35%
National Airspace System
31%
Late-arriving aircraft
18%
Extreme weather
16%

Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 2.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 24,385 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 8,491 of the 24,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.45% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.38%.

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. 9.1% 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 runs 84.7% on time across 1,307 flights, within 3 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 1,308 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.

What to do with this

Booking SkyWest on FSD to DEN

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 93.8% on time and July 70.3%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,284 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures