Carrier route record

OOGTF→DEN

SkyWest Airlines · Great Falls to Denver

Flights: 201
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 28%
Carriers: 2

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

SkyWest on GTF to DEN earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 14 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 201 flights, with a median arrival 21 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's GTF to DEN record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 139 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

91.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 199 completed flights

Avg delay

121 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

85.6%

Every carrier on GTF to DEN, 729 flights

These figures cover 201 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 21 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

SkyWest against every carrier on GTF to DEN

SkyWest flew 201 of the 729 flights on GTF to DEN, about 28% of it. Its 91.5% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 85.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 91.5% to United at 83.3%.

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 GTF to DEN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample	201	91.5%	121 min	1.00%	A
United Airlines	528	83.3%	86 min	0.95%	B+

Departure window

When SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 201 flights.

5am–8am127 flights93.7%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm74 flights87.7%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 93.7% on time for the 5am–8am window against 87.7% for 2pm–5pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 127 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on GTF to DEN through the year

Oct–Dec 202579 flights89.9%
Jan–Mar 2026122 flights92.5%

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 91.5% on time across 201 flights.

Split by quarter, SkyWest on GTF to DEN logged 79 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 122 flights in Jan–Mar 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 91.5% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 96.7% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 87.1%. 10 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 2,049 reported delay minutes.

Extreme weather
41%
Carrier
38%
Late-arriving aircraft
16%
National Airspace System
4%

Extreme weather accounts for 41% 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 6.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 2,049 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 785 of the 2,049 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.00% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.5% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

The 623 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 85.9% on time across 201 flights, 6 points below 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 6 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 201 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking SkyWest on GTF to DEN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 201 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 91.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 199 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