Carrier route record

OOMTJ→DEN

SkyWest Airlines · Montrose to Denver

Flights: 110
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 8%
Carriers: 3

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

SkyWest on MTJ to DEN sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 110 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 420 at 80.7% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on MTJ to DEN from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

75.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 107 completed flights

Avg delay

68 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.91%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.9%

Every carrier on MTJ to DEN, 1,416 flights

These figures cover 110 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% 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 MTJ to DEN

SkyWest flew 110 of the 1,416 flights on MTJ to DEN, about 8% of it. Its 75.7% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 80.7% to SkyWest at 75.7%.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 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 MTJ to DEN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines	420	80.7%	80 min	0.24%	B+
United Airlines	886	78.5%	93 min	0.68%	B+
SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample	110	75.7%	68 min	0.91%	B+

No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 80.7%, 2 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 110 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm50 flights70.2%
2pm–5pm60 flights80.0%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 70.2% on time against 80.0% for 2pm–5pm. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 60 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on MTJ to DEN through the year

Jul–Sep 202549 flights69.6%
Oct–Dec 202515 flights—
Jan–Mar 20265 flights—
Apr–Jun 202641 flights73.2%

Scale runs 60% to 80%. 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 75.7% on time across 110 flights.

Split by quarter, SkyWest on MTJ to DEN logged 49 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 15 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 5 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 41 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 75.7% annual figure is the one to use.

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 1,776 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
36%
National Airspace System
30%
Late-arriving aircraft
19%
Extreme weather
15%

Extreme weather accounts for 15% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 1,776 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 635 of the 1,776 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 0.91% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.82%.

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. 9.3% 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 197 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 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 84.5% on time across 110 flights, 9 points above 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 9 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 110 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 MTJ to DEN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 110 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 75.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 107 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