Carrier route record
OOXNA→DEN
SkyWest Airlines · Bentonville to Denver
- Flights
- 765
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 60%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on XNA 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 765 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on XNA 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
79.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 754 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.65%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.2%
Every carrier on XNA to DEN, 1,280 flights
These figures cover 765 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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
SkyWest against every carrier on XNA to DEN
SkyWest flew 765 of the 1,280 flights on XNA to DEN, most of the route. Its 79.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 79.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 80.1% to Frontier at 76.4%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 370 | 80.1% | 65 min | 1.08% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 765 | 79.3% | 81 min | 0.65% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 145 | 76.4% | 98 min | 0.69% | B+ |
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on XNA 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 19 points, against half 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–11am—
- 11am–2pm361 flights88.3%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm363 flights69.6%
- 8pm–5am—
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 88.3% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 69.6%. 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 363 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on XNA to DEN through the year
July is the worst month at 58.6% on time, 34 points below November, the best at 92.9%. 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 87 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 84.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 74.5%. 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 13,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%National Airspace System
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
39% 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 4,925 minutes out of 13,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 12,632 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.65%, 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
7.8% 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 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 84.1% on time across 766 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 765 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking SkyWest on XNA to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 765 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 79.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 754 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- XNA to DEN, every carrier
- SkyWest on DEN to XNA, the return leg
- United Airlines on XNA to DEN80.1%
- Frontier Airlines on XNA to DEN76.4%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.