Carrier route record

OOMSP→DEN

SkyWest Airlines · Minneapolis to Denver

Flights: 244
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 4%
Carriers: 5

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

SkyWest on MSP 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 about 2.4 hours. That rests on 244 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 619 at 80.4% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's MSP to DEN record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 136 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

91.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 239 completed flights

Avg delay

143 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.05%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

77.6%

Every carrier on MSP to DEN, 5,838 flights

These figures cover 244 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 MSP to DEN

SkyWest flew 244 of the 5,838 flights on MSP to DEN, about 4% of it. Its 91.2% on time is 14 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 91.2% to Southwest at 75.7%.

The four carriers here are closely matched: 5 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 MSP to DEN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample	244	91.2%	143 min	2.05%	A
Frontier Airlines	619	80.4%	93 min	0.81%	B+
United Airlines	1,459	78.4%	80 min	0.75%	B+
Delta Air Lines	1,804	76.0%	59 min	0.94%	B+
Southwest Airlines	1,712	75.7%	61 min	0.53%	B+

No carrier stands out. Frontier tops the table at 80.4%, 5 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 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 244 flights.

5am–8am109 flights93.6%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm133 flights89.1%
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm2 flights—
8pm–5am—

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

The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 93.6% on time for the 5am–8am window against 89.1% for 11am–2pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 133 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on MSP to DEN through the year

Jul–Sep 202555 flights94.5%
Oct–Dec 2025101 flights89.6%
Jan–Mar 202661 flights86.9%
Apr–Jun 202627 flights—

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 91.2% on time across 244 flights.

Quarter by quarter SkyWest on MSP to DEN held fairly steady: 94.5% in Jul–Sep 2025, 89.6% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 86.9% in Jan–Mar 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 97.2% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 86.0%. 11 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 71% of the 2,992 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.

Carrier
71%
National Airspace System
27%
Late-arriving aircraft
2%

The largest share of delay minutes, 71%, 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 2,135 of the 2,992 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,992 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 2.05% 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 2.1% 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 680 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 88.7% on time across 244 flights, within 3 points 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. 244 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 MSP to DEN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 244 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 91.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 239 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