Route reliability record
XNA→DEN
Bentonville to Denver
- Flights
- 1,280
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 616 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route 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 1,280 XNA to DEN flights, of which United Airlines flew 370 at 80.1% on time.
Best time to fly XNA to DEN: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 83.3%, against 79.2% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
79.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,264 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.78%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
80.1% on time across 370 flights
These figures cover 1,280 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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
Which airline is most reliable on XNA to DEN
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 370 | 80.1% | 65 min | 1.08% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 765 | 79.3% | 81 min | 0.65% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 145 | 76.4% | 98 min | 0.69% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 80.1%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on XNA 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Bentonville 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. XNA → DENBentonville to Denver | United Airlines | 79.2% | 80.1% | 1.08% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 2. XNA → DENBentonville to Denver | SkyWest Airlines | 78.8% | 79.3% | 0.65% | 11am–2pm, Sun | OO 5694 17:05 |
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 21 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–8am41 flights85.4%
- 8am–11am364 flights80.0%
- 11am–2pm364 flights88.1%
- 2pm–5pm57 flights87.7%
- 5pm–8pm399 flights70.0%
- 8pm–5am55 flights67.3%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 88.1% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 67.3%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 399 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 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.
July is the worst month at 61.4% on time, 29 points below November, the best at 90.1%. 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 137 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.3% on time and Thursday the weakest at 74.4%. 9 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 21,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%National Airspace System
- 32%Carrier
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Extreme weather
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 7,343 minutes out of 21,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 20,696 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.78%, 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
7.9% 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 616 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 runs 80.7% on time across 1,281 flights, within 2 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 1,280 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. November runs 90.1% on time and July 61.4%, a swing of 29 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,264 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
XNA to DEN questions
How often is XNA 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 20.8% of the 1,280 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 XNA to DEN?
United Airlines leads at 80.1% on time across 370 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 79.3%, a gap of about a point. 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 XNA to DEN?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 88.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 67.3%, 21 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 July delays on XNA to DEN?
July is the weakest month at 61.4% on time, compared with 90.1% in November. Across the year that is 29 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 XNA — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- United Airlines on XNA to DEN80.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on XNA to DEN79.3%
- Frontier Airlines on XNA to DEN76.4%
- XNA to DFW, a related route78.7%
- PHX to DEN, a related route77.2%
- XNA to ORD, a related route75.9%
- United Airlines on-time record80.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record79.3%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record76.4%
- 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
Direction matters. XNA to DEN and DEN to XNA 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.