Route reliability record

OMA→DEN

Omaha to Denver

Flights: 3,289
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 472 mi
Carriers: 4

This route lands a B+, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrive 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 3,289 flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 386 at 89.5% on time.

SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 89.5% on time across 386 flights.

On time

76.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,263 completed flights

Avg delay

70 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.58%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

SkyWest

89.5% on time across 386 flights

These figures cover 3,289 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.8% 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

Which airline is most reliable on OMA to DEN

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 89.5% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 71.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,404 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on OMA to DEN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	386	89.5%	90 min	0.78%	A+
United Airlines	1,286	78.4%	73 min	0.54%	B+
Southwest Airlines	1,404	71.3%	59 min	0.64%	C+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	213	69.0%	120 min	0.00%	C+

The spread between SkyWest and Southwest is 18 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 18 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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 18 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am728 flights92.8%
8am–11am462 flights74.5%
11am–2pm569 flights82.8%
2pm–5pm497 flights74.8%
5pm–8pm756 flights60.3%
8pm–5am277 flights66.1%

Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.3% 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 756 flights scheduled in it.

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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.January best, June worst

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. June was the busiest month here, with 324 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 70.7%. 10 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 55,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
41%
National Airspace System
35%
Carrier
19%
Extreme weather
5%
Security
0%

41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 55,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 54,906 reported delay minutes.

35% 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 55,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.58%, 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

8.8% 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 a little over an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.

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 75.8% on time across 3,289 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 3,289 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. 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. 3,263 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 arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 23.9% of the 3,289 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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 89.5% on time across 386 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 71.3%, a gap of 18 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 60.3%, 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.

Where to go next

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.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures