Carrier route record
OOTUL→DEN
SkyWest Airlines · Tulsa to Denver
- Flights
- 1,129
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 46%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on TUL to DEN lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five 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 1,129 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 893 at 82.4% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on TUL to DEN from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,114 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.89%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.8%
Every carrier on TUL to DEN, 2,430 flights
These figures cover 1,129 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.3% 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
SkyWest against every carrier on TUL to DEN
SkyWest flew 1,129 of the 2,430 flights on TUL to DEN, about 46% of it. Its 79.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 79.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 82.4% to Frontier at 73.8%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 82.4% of the time; United Airlines manages 75.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 366 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 893 | 82.4% | 59 min | 1.12% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 1,129 | 79.2% | 74 min | 0.89% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 366 | 75.7% | 45 min | 1.09% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 42 | 73.8% | 64 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Southwest leads United by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on TUL 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 28 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am361 flights93.0%
- 8am–11am2 flights—
- 11am–2pm362 flights81.4%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm404 flights64.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.6% on time, against 93.0% 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 404 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on TUL to DEN through the year
July is the worst month at 66.3% on time, 21 points below January, the best at 87.6%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 113 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 82.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 72.6%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
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 17,000 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Carrier
- 32%National Airspace System
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%Extreme weather
No single cause dominates. carrier at 34%, national airspace system at 32% and late-arriving aircraft at 24% split the 17,000 reported delay minutes between them. An even spread like this usually means the operation is running close to its designed capacity with no one obvious weak point, and it is the hardest pattern for a traveller to route around. The split is drawn from 17,217 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.89%, 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
8.3% 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.
The 541 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 85.4% on time across 1,129 flights, 6 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,129 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 TUL to DEN
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 87.6% on time and July 66.3%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,114 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TUL to DEN, every carrier
- SkyWest on DEN to TUL, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on TUL to DEN82.4%
- United Airlines on TUL to DEN75.7%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
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.