Route reliability record
RAP→DEN
Rapid City to Denver
- Flights
- 2,844
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 301 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 2,844 RAP to DEN flights, of which United Airlines flew 762 at 83.8% on time.
Best time to fly RAP to DEN: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Sunday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.4% of the time and Sunday flights 82.4%, against 80.5% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,807 completed flights
Avg delay
90 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.16%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
83.8% on time across 762 flights
These figures cover 2,844 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on RAP to DEN
The two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 762 | 83.8% | 76 min | 0.66% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 2,082 | 79.3% | 94 min | 1.34% | B |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 83.8%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on RAP 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 Rapid City to Denver
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. RAP → DENRapid City to Denver | United Airlines | 83.2% | 83.8% | 0.66% | 2pm–5pm, Wed | UA 1767 07:00 |
| 2. RAP → DENRapid City to Denver | SkyWest Airlines | 78.2% | 79.3% | 1.34% | 5am–8am, Sun | OO 5742 12:35 |
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 15 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am724 flights86.4%
- 8am–11am606 flights80.5%
- 11am–2pm689 flights84.8%
- 2pm–5pm579 flights71.6%
- 5pm–8pm244 flights72.0%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 86.4% of the time, against 71.6% for the afternoon window. That is 15 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 724 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter RAP 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 RAP to DEN, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 86.4% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 71.6%, a wide gap of 14.8 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am86.4%
- 8–11am80.5%
- 11am–2pm84.8%
- 2–5pm71.6%
- 5–8pm72.0%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 15 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 72.0% on time, 15 points below February, the best at 86.5%. 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. September was the busiest month here, with 262 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 82.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 77.8%, a spread of 5 points.
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 49,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Carrier
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%National Airspace System
- 14%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 49,157 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 18,000 of the 49,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.16% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.14%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 301 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 77.7% on time across 2,844 flights, within 3 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 2,844 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. February runs 86.5% on time and August 72.0%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 2,807 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RAP to DEN questions
How often is RAP to DEN delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.5% of the 2,844 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on RAP to DEN?
United Airlines leads at 83.8% on time across 762 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 79.3%, 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 RAP to DEN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.4% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 71.6%, 15 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 RAP to DEN?
August is the weakest month at 72.0% on time, compared with 86.5% in February. Across the year that is 15 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 RAP — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- United Airlines on RAP to DEN83.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on RAP to DEN79.3%
- RAP to DFW, a related route84.5%
- PHX to DEN, a related route76.7%
- SLC to DEN, a related route79.0%
- United Airlines on-time record83.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record79.3%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. RAP to DEN and DEN to RAP 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.