Carrier route record
OOLAX→DEN
SkyWest Airlines · Los Angeles to Denver
- Flights
- 1,231
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 16%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on LAX to DEN lands a B+, 4 points 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,231 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 3,067 at 87.1% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 87.1% on time across 3,067 flights.
Key figures
On time
81.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,218 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.81%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.7%
Every carrier on LAX to DEN, 7,721 flights
These figures cover 1,231 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 LAX to DEN
SkyWest flew 1,231 of the 7,721 flights on LAX to DEN, about 16% of it. Its 81.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 81.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 87.1% to Southwest at 74.1%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 87.1% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 74.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,917 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 3,067 | 87.1% | 68 min | 0.10% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 762 | 81.9% | 90 min | 0.79% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 1,231 | 81.2% | 61 min | 0.81% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 744 | 79.7% | 85 min | 1.48% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,917 | 74.1% | 52 min | 0.47% | C+ |
The spread between United and Southwest is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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 19 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am108 flights93.5%
- 8am–11am357 flights86.7%
- 11am–2pm51 flights78.4%
- 2pm–5pm511 flights74.5%
- 5pm–8pm141 flights80.7%
- 8pm–5am63 flights85.7%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.5% of the time, against 74.5% for the afternoon window. That is 19 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 511 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on LAX to DEN through the year
August is the worst month at 72.0% on time, 19 points below November, the best at 91.4%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 156 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 75.4%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 45% of the 14,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 45%Carrier
- 27%National Airspace System
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, 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 6,274 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 13,852 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.81%, 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
7.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 862 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 runs 80.1% on time across 1,231 flights, within about a point 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 1,231 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 LAX to DEN
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 91.4% on time and August 72.0%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,218 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to DEN, every carrier
- SkyWest on DEN to LAX, the return leg
- United Airlines on LAX to DEN87.1%
- Frontier Airlines on LAX to DEN81.9%
- Delta Air Lines on LAX to DEN79.7%
- Southwest Airlines on LAX to DEN74.1%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.