Route reliability record
MCI→DEN
Kansas City to Denver
- Flights
- 4,370
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 533 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 4,370 MCI to DEN flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 414 at 86.4% on time.
Best time to fly MCI to DEN: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 81.5%, against 78.1% for the route overall.
SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 86.4% on time across 414 flights.
Key figures
On time
78.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,335 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.53%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
86.4% on time across 414 flights
These figures cover 4,370 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 3 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MCI to DEN
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 86.4% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 74.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,367 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 414 | 86.4% | 116 min | 0.24% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 1,297 | 81.0% | 62 min | 0.54% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 292 | 79.0% | 115 min | 0.34% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 2,367 | 74.8% | 59 min | 0.59% | C+ |
SkyWest leads Southwest by 12 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on MCI to DEN
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Kansas City to Denver
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MCI → DENKansas City to Denver | SkyWest Airlines | 86.2% | 86.4% | 0.24% | 11am–2pm, Fri | — |
| 2. MCI → DENKansas City to Denver | United Airlines | 80.6% | 81.0% | 0.54% | 5am–8am, Wed | UA 708 13:50 |
| 3. MCI → DENKansas City to Denver | Southwest Airlines | 74.4% | 74.8% | 0.59% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 32 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am771 flights92.9%
- 8am–11am806 flights83.8%
- 11am–2pm947 flights85.6%
- 2pm–5pm674 flights68.7%
- 5pm–8pm951 flights61.4%
- 8pm–5am221 flights72.6%
Scale runs 55% to 100%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 61.4% on time, against 92.9% for the 5am–8am 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 951 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MCI to DEN by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On MCI to DEN, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 92.9% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 61.4%, a wide gap of 31.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am92.9%
- 8–11am83.8%
- 11am–2pm85.6%
- 2–5pm68.7%
- 5–8pm61.4%
- 8pm–5am72.6%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 13 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 72.8% on time, against 85.3% in January. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. July was the busiest month here, with 440 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 74.5%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 64,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%National Airspace System
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 64,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 63,661 reported delay minutes.
37% 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 23,000 minutes out of 64,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.53%, below the national 1.89% 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 actually costs
7.5% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 533 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.
The return leg runs 76.5% on time across 4,364 flights, within 2 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 4,370 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DEN after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 85.3% on time and December 72.8%, a swing of 13 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 4,335 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MCI to DEN questions
How often is MCI to DEN delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.9% of the 4,370 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MCI to DEN?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 86.4% on time across 414 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 74.8%, a gap of 12 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MCI to DEN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 61.4%, 32 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are December delays on MCI to DEN?
December is the weakest month at 72.8% on time, compared with 85.3% in January. Across the year that is 13 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to MCI — the return legseparate record
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on MCI to DEN86.4%
- United Airlines on MCI to DEN81.0%
- Frontier Airlines on MCI to DEN79.0%
- Southwest Airlines on MCI to DEN74.8%
- MCI to ORD, a related route74.6%
- PHX to DEN, a related route76.7%
- MCI to ATL, a related route86.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record86.4%
- United Airlines on-time record81.0%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record79.0%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. MCI to DEN and DEN to MCI are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed MCI to DEN’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.