Carrier route record
OOFSD→DEN
SkyWest Airlines · Sioux Falls to Denver
- Flights
- 1,313
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 72%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on FSD to DEN 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 an hour and a half on average. That rests on 1,313 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's FSD to DEN record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 54 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,292 completed flights
Avg delay
96 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.37%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
80.2%
Every carrier on FSD to DEN, 1,818 flights
These figures cover 1,313 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on FSD to DEN
SkyWest flew 1,313 of the 1,818 flights on FSD to DEN, most of the route. Its 82.7% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 82.7% to Frontier at 71.2%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 1,313 | 82.7% | 96 min | 1.37% | B |
| United Airlines | 366 | 74.3% | 61 min | 1.91% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 139 | 71.2% | 108 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on FSD to DEN
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 26 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am360 flights91.2%
- 8am–11am1 flights—
- 11am–2pm428 flights91.5%
- 2pm–5pm90 flights87.6%
- 5pm–8pm434 flights65.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 91.5% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 65.8%. 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 434 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on FSD to DEN through the year
August is the worst month at 70.1% 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. August was the busiest month here, with 141 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.7% on time and Saturday the weakest at 80.3%, a spread of 6 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late SkyWest on FSD to DEN runs when it is late
SkyWest on FSD to DEN often beats the schedule: 564 of 1,292 completed flights, 44%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 223 late arrivals split 59 under half an hour, 59 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 105 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early564 flights43.7%
- Within 15 min505 flights39.1%
- 15–29 min late59 flights4.6%
- 30–59 min late59 flights4.6%
- 1–2 hours late53 flights4.1%
- 2+ hours late52 flights4.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,292 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 186 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 22 made it up before arrival. 59 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for SkyWest on FSD to DEN
The latest arrival of the period was on 31 August 2026, 13 hours 5 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 31 August 2026 | 13 hours 5 minutes | Carrier |
| 5 May 2026 | 11 hours 17 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 18 December 2025 | 9 hours 38 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 7 June 2026 | 7 hours 57 minutes | Carrier |
| 21 July 2026 | 7 hours 40 minutes | Carrier |
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 21,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Carrier
- 29%National Airspace System
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 21,391 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 8,689 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.37% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.23%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.1% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
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 85.5% on time across 1,313 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 1,313 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 August 70.1%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,292 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FSD to DEN, every carrier
- SkyWest on DEN to FSD, the return leg
- United Airlines on FSD to DEN74.3%
- Frontier Airlines on FSD to DEN71.2%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
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.