Route profile
DEN→OMA
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Denver to Omaha, 472 miles.
Right now
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Route reliability
July 2023 – July 2026
Better than 44% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 10,140 flights. How this is calculated
DEN → OMA arrives on time 75.4% of the time; the return trip, OMA → DEN, arrives on time 76.9% of the time.
DEN → OMA spends 23.0 minutes on the ground on a 472-mile trip: 18.0 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at DEN and 5.0 minutes from touchdown to gate at OMA.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
What stands out
This route has stayed remarkably steady year over year, a smaller swing than 98% of 5,368 comparable routes.
77.0% on time over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), against 77.1% in the 12 months before (2024-08 to 2025-07), virtually unchanged.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Ranked against every other route with the same kind of figure and at least 5,368 in the comparison.
Why DEN → OMA flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
DEN → OMA cancelled 81 of 10,140 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 125. The reason filed most often was extreme weather, 65.4% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 191 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 81 cancelled departures carrying a reason code.
What each reason means
Conditions the carrier judged severe enough to stop the flight: a blizzard, a hurricane, a line of thunderstorms.
53 cancellations, 65.4% of the total.
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
23 cancellations, 28.4% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
5 cancellations, 6.2% of the total.
A terminal evacuation, a security breach, screening equipment failure, or screening queues over 29 minutes.
0 cancellations, 0.0% of the total.
Reason codes are the operating airline’s own filing with US DOT, not an independent finding of fault. Ordinary bad weather is filed under air traffic, so weather’s full share is larger than its bar.
81 coded cancellations were recorded on DEN → OMA; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
49 min late
against a median of 3 min early
Percentiles over 10,140 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at OMA after arriving from DEN.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 43% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 24% | High risk |
| 60 min | 16% | High risk |
| 90 min | 7.8% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 4.3% | Low risk |
This is one leg of a connection. Gate changes and the next flight's own schedule matter too. And a connection can fail before delay is even the question — this route cancels 0.80% of the time and diverts 0.14% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 10,045 arrivals on this route that landed later than the connection time less 30 minutes to reach the next gate.
The worst tenth of arrivals on this route land at least 49 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 10,140 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
DEN → OMA flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 89.6% of the time, against 64.1% for 9 PM–5 AM departures, a gap of 25.5 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 6 AM: too few flights to score
- 7 AM: 89.3% on time from 375 flights
- 8 AM: 89.7% on time from 713 flights
- 9 AM: 84.3% on time from 497 flights
- 10 AM: 83.3% on time from 1,150 flights
- 11 AM: 79.5% on time from 323 flights
- 12 PM: 80.2% on time from 486 flights
- 1 PM: 80.2% on time from 1,546 flights
- 2 PM: 72.7% on time from 406 flights
- 3 PM: 72.6% on time from 248 flights
- 4 PM: 67.8% on time from 484 flights
- 5 PM: 68.5% on time from 1,257 flights
- 6 PM: 66.3% on time from 524 flights
- 7 PM: 55.5% on time from 330 flights
- 8 PM: 68.8% on time from 888 flights
- 9 PM: 66.0% on time from 713 flights
- 10 PM: 55.2% on time from 160 flights
- 11 PM: too few flights to score
Why DEN → OMA runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
screening or terminal security incidents
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for DEN → OMA. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on DEN → OMA, at 51.7%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 89.6% of the time and 9 PM–5 AM departures 64.1%.
How this route holds up in bad weather
July 2023 – July 2026
Bad weather raises cancellations by a similar amount at both ends of DEN to OMA: 4.0 times the normal rate at DEN and 3.3 times at OMA. Cancelled in bad weather against normal hours: DEN 2.8% against 0.7%, OMA 3.1% against 1.0%. Flights that did leave DEN in bad weather arrived on time 51.5% of the time, against 78.8% in normal hours.
Bad weather and normal hours at the airports
Scheduled departures, July 2023 – July 2026| Departures from | DEN | OMA |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled in bad weather | 2.8% | 3.1% |
| Cancelled in normal hours | 0.7% | 1.0% |
| Arrived on time, bad weather | 51.5% | 72.4% |
| Arrived on time, normal hours | 78.8% | 83.1% |
| Departures in bad weather | 92,610 | 8,317 |
Of the carriers on this route, United Airlines (1.5% cancelled against 3.5% for the other carriers at DEN) cancelled the fewest departures from DEN in bad weather and SkyWest Airlines (5.8% cancelled against 1.8% for the other carriers at DEN) the most.
This route’s airlines in bad weather at DEN
All departures from DEN| Airline | Bad-weather departures | Cancelled | Other carriers |
|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 30,853 | 1.5%below the others | 3.5% |
| Southwest Airlines | 28,467 | 2.4%below the others | 3.1% |
| Frontier Airlines | 6,740 | 3.1%about level | 2.8% |
| SkyWest Airlines | 19,275 | 5.8%above the others | 1.8% |
These are airport figures, not route figures: every scheduled departure from DEN and OMA, to any destination, in hours the weather report called bad. The airline rows count each carrier’s departures from DEN on every route.
Weather source and limits. In full: DEN (airlines), OMA, What Weather Costs Each Airport, Who Cancels More When the Weather Turns, Airports That Change Places When Weather Turns.
Airlines on this route
Carriers with at least 200 flights, by the airline that operated each one.
| Carrier | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 4,622 | 73.0% | 0.74% | 0 min | 7.1% |
| United Airlines | 4,293 | 76.6% | 0.82% | -4 min | 9.0% |
| Frontier Airlines | 698 | 73.5% | 1.29% | -6 min | 10.8% |
| SkyWest Airlines | 527 | 88.2% | 0.57% | -9 min | 3.6% |
Southwest Airlines flew 45.6% of the 10,140 flights listed.
SkyWest Airlines arrived on time 15.2 percentage points more often than Southwest Airlines on this route.
Flights on this route
Flight numbers with at least 600 operations here and still on the schedule.
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Wednesday is historically the most reliable day and Friday the least, a gap of 5.6 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 76.0%
- Feb: 80.0%
- Mar: 76.8%
- Apr: 77.6%
- May: 69.7%
- Jun: 64.6%
- Jul: 67.5%
- Aug: 72.8%
- Sep: 81.4%
- Oct: 81.4%
- Nov: 83.5%
- Dec: 79.4%
June is historically the weakest month and November the strongest, a spread of 18.9 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 63.1% from 276 flights
- August 2023: 74.4% from 291 flights
- September 2023: 75.0% from 261 flights
- October 2023: 75.0% from 285 flights
- November 2023: 80.7% from 275 flights
- December 2023: 77.3% from 286 flights
- January 2024: 71.0% from 260 flights
- February 2024: 75.7% from 240 flights
- March 2024: 74.7% from 281 flights
- April 2024: 73.4% from 276 flights
- May 2024: 64.4% from 296 flights
- June 2024: 66.2% from 285 flights
- July 2024: 69.4% from 296 flights
- August 2024: 76.5% from 279 flights
- September 2024: 88.9% from 270 flights
- October 2024: 87.2% from 274 flights
- November 2024: 80.8% from 254 flights
- December 2024: 89.5% from 259 flights
- January 2025: 74.5% from 248 flights
- February 2025: 80.3% from 228 flights
- March 2025: 80.0% from 260 flights
- April 2025: 76.0% from 244 flights
- May 2025: 72.4% from 289 flights
- June 2025: 62.5% from 302 flights
- July 2025: 62.1% from 317 flights
- August 2025: 67.7% from 295 flights
- September 2025: 80.3% from 284 flights
- October 2025: 82.3% from 288 flights
- November 2025: 88.8% from 270 flights
- December 2025: 71.8% from 259 flights
- January 2026: 82.8% from 234 flights
- February 2026: 84.2% from 223 flights
- March 2026: 76.0% from 253 flights
- April 2026: 83.7% from 252 flights
- May 2026: 72.6% from 290 flights
- June 2026: 65.1% from 324 flights
- July 2026: 74.3% from 336 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 77.0% against 77.1% in the 12 months before — broadly unchanged.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 10,140 DEN → OMA flight records from the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, covering July 2023 – July 2026. Late means 15 or more minutes past scheduled arrival; cancelled and diverted flights are left out of on-time rates.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: How Long a Layover Needs to Be · Two Airlines on One Route · Best Time of Day to Fly From Major US Airports
Analysis last recomputed