Route reliability record
XNA→DEN
Bentonville to Denver
- Flights
- 1,345
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 616 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly 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 1,345 XNA to DEN flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 825 at 81.7% on time.
Best time to fly XNA to DEN: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 86.1%, against 81.5% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 42 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,334 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.67%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
81.7% on time across 825 flights
These figures cover 1,345 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 150 | 82.0% | 106 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 825 | 81.7% | 84 min | 0.85% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 370 | 80.7% | 68 min | 0.54% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 81.7%, 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.
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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 | SkyWest Airlines | 81.0% | 81.7% | 0.85% | 11am–2pm, Tue | OO 5812 13:28 |
| 2. XNA → DENBentonville to Denver | United Airlines | 80.3% | 80.7% | 0.54% | 8am–11am, 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 20 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am103 flights89.3%
- 8am–11am364 flights80.7%
- 11am–2pm363 flights91.1%
- 2pm–5pm90 flights86.7%
- 5pm–8pm389 flights70.8%
- 8pm–5am36 flights72.2%
Scale runs 60% to 95%.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 91.1% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 70.8%. 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 389 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter XNA 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 XNA to DEN, the best departure window is 11am–2pm at 91.1% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 70.8%, a wide gap of 20.3 points. All US flights leaving 11am–2pm ran 78.3%.
- 5–8am89.3%
- 8–11am80.7%
- 11am–2pm91.1%
- 2–5pm86.7%
- 5–8pm70.8%
- 8pm–5am72.2%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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 74.5% on time, 16 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. August was the busiest month here, with 140 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 77.9%, a spread of 8 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 20,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Carrier
- 30%National Airspace System
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 7,894 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 20,272 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.67%, 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
7.1% 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.
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.
The return leg runs 82.0% on time across 1,346 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 1,345 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 June 74.5%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,334 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
XNA to DEN questions
How often is XNA to DEN delayed?
Roughly 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 18.5% of the 1,345 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 XNA to DEN?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 81.7% on time across 825 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 80.7%, 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 91.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 70.8%, 20 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 XNA to DEN?
June is the weakest month at 74.5% on time, compared with 90.1% in November. Across the year that is 16 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
- Frontier Airlines on XNA to DEN82.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on XNA to DEN81.7%
- United Airlines on XNA to DEN80.7%
- XNA to DFW, a related route79.9%
- PHX to DEN, a related route76.7%
- XNA to ORD, a related route77.3%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record82.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record81.7%
- United Airlines on-time record80.7%
- 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. 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.