Carrier route record

OOHDN→DEN

SkyWest Airlines · Hayden to Denver

Flights: 265
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 19%
Carriers: 3

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

SkyWest on HDN to DEN sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 265 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 731 at 79.4% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on HDN to DEN runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 42 extra late arrivals.

On time

73.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 263 completed flights

Avg delay

62 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.38%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

77.4%

Every carrier on HDN to DEN, 1,426 flights

These figures cover 265 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.3% 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

SkyWest against every carrier on HDN to DEN

SkyWest flew 265 of the 1,426 flights on HDN to DEN, about 19% of it. Its 73.4% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 79.4% to SkyWest at 73.4%.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.

On-time performance by carrier on HDN to DEN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	731	79.4%	78 min	0.96%	B+
Southwest Airlines	430	76.5%	67 min	0.23%	B+
SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample	265	73.4%	62 min	0.38%	C+

No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 79.4%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

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 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am138 flights78.8%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm49 flights83.3%
2pm–5pm78 flights57.7%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 50% 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 83.3% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 57.7%. 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 138 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on HDN to DEN through the year

Jul–Sep 2025164 flights74.1%
Oct–Dec 202560 flights85.0%
Apr–Jun 202641 flights53.7%

Scale runs 45% to 90%. 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 73.4% on time across 265 flights.

SkyWest on HDN to DEN did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 85.0% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 53.7%, a swing of 31 points on roughly 88 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.5%. 15 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 4,322 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
36%
Carrier
36%
Late-arriving aircraft
17%
Extreme weather
11%
Security
0%

36% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,555 minutes out of 4,322, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 4,322 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 1,549 of the 4,322 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.38%, below the national 1.81% 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 costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.3% 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 141 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 72.9% on time across 264 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.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 265 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 HDN to DEN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 265 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 73.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 263 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