Carrier route record

OOMTJ→DEN

SkyWest Airlines · Montrose to Denver

Flights: 101
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 7%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 101 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 428 at 81.5% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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

74.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 101 completed flights

Avg delay

78 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

80.4%

Every carrier on MTJ to DEN, 1,423 flights

These figures cover 101 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

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Carrier by carrier

SkyWest against every carrier on MTJ to DEN

SkyWest flew 101 of the 1,423 flights on MTJ to DEN, about 7% of it. Its 74.3% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 80.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 81.5% to SkyWest at 74.3%.

The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point 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	428	81.5%	65 min	0.23%	B+
United Airlines	894	80.5%	92 min	0.45%	B+
SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample	101	74.3%	78 min	0.00%	C+

No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 81.5%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

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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 101 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split SkyWest's MTJ to DEN record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 74.3% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

SkyWest on MTJ to DEN through the year

Oct–Dec 202515 flights—
Jan–Mar 20265 flights—
Apr–Jun 202641 flights73.2%
Jul–Sep 202640 flights65.0%

Scale runs 55% 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 74.3% on time across 101 flights.

Split by quarter, SkyWest on MTJ to DEN logged 15 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 5 flights in Jan–Mar 2026, 41 flights in Apr–Jun 2026 and 40 flights in Jul–Sep 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 74.3% annual figure is the one to use.

Arrival by arrival

How late SkyWest on MTJ to DEN runs when it is late

The 26 late arrivals split 9 under half an hour, 4 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 13 an hour or more.

15+ min early19 flights18.8%
Within 15 min56 flights55.4%
15–29 min late9 flights8.9%
30–59 min late4 flights4.0%
1–2 hours late9 flights8.9%
2+ hours late4 flights4.0%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 101 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

4 of 22 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 18% of them. In the other direction, 8 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DEN.

The worst days

Worst days for SkyWest on MTJ to DEN

The latest arrival of the period was on 8 August 2026, 5 hours 11 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of SkyWest on MTJ to DEN in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
8 August 2026	5 hours 11 minutes	National Airspace System
5 January 2026	3 hours 16 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
22 July 2026	3 hours 16 minutes	National Airspace System
7 July 2026	2 hours 44 minutes	National Airspace System
30 May 2026	1 hour 53 minutes	National Airspace System

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

National Airspace System accounts for 54% of the 2,018 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

National Airspace System
54%
Late-arriving aircraft
19%
Extreme weather
18%
Carrier
9%

Extreme weather accounts for 18% 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 3.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 2,018 reported delay minutes.

54% 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 1,095 minutes out of 2,018, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

12.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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 87.1% on time across 101 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 101 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. 101 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 74.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 101 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures