Carrier route record
OOOKC→DEN
SkyWest Airlines · Oklahoma City to Denver
- Flights
- 1,262
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 40%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on OKC to DEN lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,262 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 1,223 at 78.0% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's OKC to DEN record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 43 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,252 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.63%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.2%
Every carrier on OKC to DEN, 3,167 flights
These figures cover 1,262 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 OKC to DEN
SkyWest flew 1,262 of the 3,167 flights on OKC to DEN, about 40% of it. Its 81.9% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 81.9% to United at 75.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 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. Southwest tops the table at 78.0%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on OKC to DEN
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 25 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am362 flights93.9%
- 8am–11am174 flights78.2%
- 11am–2pm358 flights84.5%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm368 flights69.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.9% of the time, against 69.2% for the evening window. That is 25 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 368 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on OKC to DEN through the year
August is the worst month at 70.7% on time, 21 points below November, the best at 92.0%. 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 154 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 85.6% on time and Saturday the weakest at 79.0%. 7 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 17,000 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
- 34%National Airspace System
- 14%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%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 7,924 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 17,089 reported delay minutes.
34% 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 5,752 minutes out of 17,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.63%, 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
6.4% 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 a little over an hour, 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 82.4% on time across 1,256 flights, within half a point 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 1,262 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 SkyWest on OKC to DEN
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 92.0% on time and August 70.7%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,252 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- OKC to DEN, every carrier
- SkyWest on DEN to OKC, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on OKC to DEN78.0%
- Frontier Airlines on OKC to DEN77.1%
- United Airlines on OKC to DEN75.2%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- 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
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.