Route reliability record
OMA→DEN
Omaha to Denver
- Flights
- 3,325
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 472 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route 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 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 3,325 OMA to DEN flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 425 at 85.0% on time.
Best time to fly OMA to DEN: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 79.4%, against 75.8% for the route overall.
SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 85.0% on time across 425 flights.
Key figures
On time
75.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,300 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.51%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
85.0% on time across 425 flights
These figures cover 3,325 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on OMA to DEN
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 85.0% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 71.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,384 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 425 | 85.0% | 80 min | 0.71% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 1,284 | 78.2% | 74 min | 0.47% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,384 | 71.8% | 62 min | 0.51% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 232 | 69.7% | 119 min | 0.43% | C+ |
The spread between SkyWest and Southwest is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Flights on OMA to DEN
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Omaha to Denver
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. OMA → DENOmaha to Denver | SkyWest Airlines | 84.4% | 85.0% | 0.71% | 11am–2pm, Tue | — |
| 2. LNK → DENLincoln to Denver | SkyWest Airlines | 79.3% | 80.1% | 0.94% | 5am–8am, Sun | OO 5866 06:00 |
| 3. OMA → DENOmaha to Denver | United Airlines | 77.8% | 78.2% | 0.47% | 5am–8am, Wed | UA 792 09:05 |
| 4. OMA → DENOmaha to Denver | Southwest Airlines | 71.4% | 71.8% | 0.51% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 33 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am729 flights92.8%
- 8am–11am468 flights73.6%
- 11am–2pm563 flights84.8%
- 2pm–5pm487 flights73.6%
- 5pm–8pm826 flights59.5%
- 8pm–5am252 flights68.9%
Scale runs 50% to 100%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.5% on time, against 92.8% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 826 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter OMA to DEN by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On OMA to DEN, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 92.8% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 59.5%, a wide gap of 33.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am92.8%
- 8–11am73.6%
- 11am–2pm84.8%
- 2–5pm73.6%
- 5–8pm59.5%
- 8pm–5am68.9%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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.
June is the worst month at 62.8% on time, 23 points below January, the best at 85.8%. 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 335 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 70.7%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 58,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%National Airspace System
- 18%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 58,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 to one. The split is drawn from 57,765 reported delay minutes.
33% 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 19,000 minutes out of 58,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.51%, below the national 1.89% 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
9.0% 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 472 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 76.9% on time across 3,326 flights, within about 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 3,325 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DEN after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 85.8% on time and June 62.8%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 3,300 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
OMA to DEN questions
How often is OMA to DEN delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 24.2% of the 3,325 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on OMA to DEN?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 85.0% on time across 425 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 71.8%, a gap of 13 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 OMA to DEN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 59.5%, 33 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 June delays on OMA to DEN?
June is the weakest month at 62.8% on time, compared with 85.8% in January. Across the year that is 23 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 OMA — the return legseparate record
- Eppley Airfield (OMA) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on OMA to DEN85.0%
- United Airlines on OMA to DEN78.2%
- Southwest Airlines on OMA to DEN71.8%
- Frontier Airlines on OMA to DEN69.7%
- OMA to ORD, a related route74.2%
- PHX to DEN, a related route76.7%
- OMA to PHX, a related route82.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record85.0%
- United Airlines on-time record78.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record71.8%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. OMA to DEN and DEN to OMA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.