Carrier route record
OOMKE→DEN
SkyWest Airlines · Milwaukee to Denver
- Flights
- 285
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 12%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on MKE to DEN lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four 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 285 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 1,255 at 79.5% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on MKE to DEN from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 284 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.35%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.1%
Every carrier on MKE to DEN, 2,342 flights
These figures cover 285 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.1% 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 MKE to DEN
SkyWest flew 285 of the 2,342 flights on MKE to DEN, about 12% of it. Its 77.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 78.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 79.5% to Frontier at 71.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,255 | 79.5% | 59 min | 0.64% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 285 | 77.5% | 65 min | 0.35% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 742 | 76.6% | 63 min | 0.13% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 60 | 71.7% | 91 min | 0.00% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 79.5%, 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 29 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am89 flights86.5%
- 11am–2pm117 flights84.6%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm78 flights57.1%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.1% on time, against 86.5% for the 8am–11am 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 117 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on MKE to DEN through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025126 flights75.4%
- Oct–Dec 202525 flights—
- Apr–Jun 2026134 flights78.2%
Scale runs 65% to 85%. 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 77.5% on time across 285 flights.
Split by quarter, SkyWest on MKE to DEN logged 126 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 25 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 134 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 77.5% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 60.5%. 26 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 46% of the 4,171 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.
- 46%Carrier
- 32%National Airspace System
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, 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 1,912 of the 4,171 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,171 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.35%, 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
8.1% 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 896 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 73.0% on time across 285 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 285 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 MKE to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 285 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 77.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 284 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MKE to DEN, every carrier
- SkyWest on DEN to MKE, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on MKE to DEN79.5%
- United Airlines on MKE to DEN76.6%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
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.