Route reliability record
OKC→DEN
Oklahoma City to Denver
- Flights
- 3,167
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 495 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrive 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 3,167 flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 1,262 at 81.9% on time.
SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 81.9% on time across 1,262 flights.
Key figures
On time
79.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,140 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.79%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
81.9% on time across 1,262 flights
These figures cover 3,167 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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
Which airline is most reliable on OKC to DEN
The three 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,262 | 81.9% | 75 min | 0.63% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,223 | 78.0% | 57 min | 0.98% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 366 | 77.1% | 77 min | 0.82% | B+ |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 316 | 75.2% | 37 min | 0.63% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 81.9%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 28 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am788 flights93.8%
- 8am–11am592 flights77.9%
- 11am–2pm620 flights83.8%
- 2pm–5pm172 flights66.5%
- 5pm–8pm771 flights65.4%
- 8pm–5am224 flights75.3%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.8% of the time, against 65.4% for the evening window. That is 28 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 788 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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.
August is the worst month at 68.9% on time, 21 points below November, the best at 90.0%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 320 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 76.5%. 5 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 41,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%National Airspace System
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
38% 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 16,000 minutes out of 41,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 41,337 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 93.8% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.79%, 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 actually costs
6.7% 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 are the about an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 495 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 77.0% on time across 3,164 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 3,167 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.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 90.0% on time and August 68.9%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 3,140 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
OKC to DEN questions
How often is OKC to DEN delayed?
About one flight in five arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 20.8% of the 3,167 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on OKC to DEN?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 81.9% on time across 1,262 flights. Frontier Airlines is at the other end on 77.1%, a gap of 5 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 OKC to DEN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 65.4%, 28 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 August delays on OKC to DEN?
August is the weakest month at 68.9% on time, compared with 90.0% in November. Across the year that is 21 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 OKC — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record81.9%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record78.0%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record77.1%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. OKC to DEN and DEN to OKC are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.