Route profile
OMA→DEN
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Omaha to Denver, 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 10,177 flights. How this is calculated
OMA → DEN arrives on time 76.9% of the time; the return trip, DEN → OMA, arrives on time 75.4% of the time.
OMA → DEN spends 26.6 minutes on the ground on a 472-mile trip: 17.2 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at OMA and 9.5 minutes from touchdown to gate at DEN.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
What stands out
The airline matters unusually much on this route, a wider carrier-to-carrier gap than 94% of 2,692 comparable routes.
SkyWest Airlines arrived on time 88.4% of the time, against 68.0% for Frontier Airlines, flying the exact same route.
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 2,692 in the comparison.
Why OMA → DEN flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
OMA → DEN cancelled 98 of 10,177 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 104. The reason filed most often was extreme weather, 62.2% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 167 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 98 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.
61 cancellations, 62.2% of the total.
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
32 cancellations, 32.7% 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, 5.1% 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.
98 coded cancellations were recorded on OMA → DEN; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
48 min late
against a median of 5 min early
Percentiles over 10,177 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at DEN after arriving from OMA.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 40% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 22% | High risk |
| 60 min | 15% | Some risk |
| 90 min | 8.1% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 4.9% | 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 0.96% of the time and diverts 0.18% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 10,061 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 48 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 10,177 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
OMA → DEN flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 92.4% of the time, against 61.2% for 3–6 PM departures, a gap of 31.2 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 5 AM: too few flights to score
- 6 AM: 92.5% on time from 1,755 flights
- 7 AM: 93.5% on time from 343 flights
- 8 AM: too few flights to score
- 9 AM: 72.4% on time from 1,175 flights
- 10 AM: 83.5% on time from 359 flights
- 11 AM: 84.0% on time from 635 flights
- 12 PM: 85.3% on time from 305 flights
- 1 PM: 85.5% on time from 1,412 flights
- 2 PM: 76.9% on time from 391 flights
- 3 PM: 60.1% on time from 261 flights
- 4 PM: 58.6% on time from 352 flights
- 5 PM: 62.1% on time from 1,367 flights
- 6 PM: 60.1% on time from 343 flights
- 7 PM: 63.2% on time from 538 flights
- 8 PM: 67.5% on time from 502 flights
- 9 PM: 67.3% on time from 271 flights
- 10 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Why OMA → DEN runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s 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 OMA → DEN. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on OMA → DEN, at 40.2%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 92.4% of the time and 3–6 PM departures 61.2%.
How this route holds up in bad weather
July 2023 – July 2026
Bad weather raises cancellations by a similar amount at both ends of OMA to DEN: 3.3 times the normal rate at OMA and 4.0 times at DEN. Cancelled in bad weather against normal hours: OMA 3.1% against 1.0%, DEN 2.8% against 0.7%. 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 | OMA | DEN |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled in bad weather | 3.1% | 2.8% |
| Cancelled in normal hours | 1.0% | 0.7% |
| Arrived on time, bad weather | 72.4% | 51.5% |
| Arrived on time, normal hours | 83.1% | 78.8% |
| Departures in bad weather | 8,317 | 92,610 |
None of the 2 carriers on this route stood clearly apart from the other carriers at OMA in bad weather. 2 more carriers fly this route but has too few bad-weather departures from OMA to compare.
This route’s airlines in bad weather at OMA
All departures from OMA| Airline | Bad-weather departures | Cancelled | Other carriers |
|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,603 | 3.1%about level | 3.3% |
| United Airlines | 1,047 | 4.0%about level | 3.3% |
These are airport figures, not route figures: every scheduled departure from OMA and DEN, to any destination, in hours the weather report called bad. The airline rows count each carrier’s departures from OMA on every route.
Weather source and limits. In full: OMA (airlines), DEN, 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 | 4,656 | 75.1% | 0.88% | -2 min | 7.9% |
| United Airlines | 4,292 | 78.8% | 1.03% | -7 min | 8.0% |
| Frontier Airlines | 698 | 68.0% | 1.43% | -2 min | 14.1% |
| SkyWest Airlines | 531 | 88.4% | 0.56% | -16 min | 4.9% |
Southwest Airlines flew 45.8% of the 10,177 flights listed.
SkyWest Airlines arrived on time 20.4 percentage points more often than Frontier Airlines on this route.
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Saturday is historically the most reliable day and Thursday the least, a gap of 6.9 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 81.0%
- Feb: 79.2%
- Mar: 79.4%
- Apr: 77.2%
- May: 71.9%
- Jun: 65.2%
- Jul: 69.6%
- Aug: 74.0%
- Sep: 82.8%
- Oct: 83.5%
- Nov: 85.6%
- Dec: 79.2%
June is historically the weakest month and November the strongest, a spread of 20.4 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 61.2% from 276 flights
- August 2023: 73.3% from 291 flights
- September 2023: 83.5% from 261 flights
- October 2023: 82.6% from 294 flights
- November 2023: 87.0% from 276 flights
- December 2023: 85.0% from 287 flights
- January 2024: 75.9% from 268 flights
- February 2024: 79.7% from 248 flights
- March 2024: 83.2% from 283 flights
- April 2024: 76.9% from 279 flights
- May 2024: 68.7% from 300 flights
- June 2024: 69.3% from 286 flights
- July 2024: 75.1% from 296 flights
- August 2024: 78.3% from 279 flights
- September 2024: 86.3% from 270 flights
- October 2024: 86.1% from 274 flights
- November 2024: 84.3% from 253 flights
- December 2024: 79.6% from 260 flights
- January 2025: 81.5% from 249 flights
- February 2025: 76.3% from 228 flights
- March 2025: 78.7% from 260 flights
- April 2025: 74.3% from 244 flights
- May 2025: 72.3% from 289 flights
- June 2025: 63.9% from 302 flights
- July 2025: 68.7% from 317 flights
- August 2025: 70.7% from 295 flights
- September 2025: 78.8% from 283 flights
- October 2025: 81.9% from 288 flights
- November 2025: 85.4% from 271 flights
- December 2025: 72.2% from 259 flights
- January 2026: 85.8% from 234 flights
- February 2026: 81.6% from 223 flights
- March 2026: 75.9% from 253 flights
- April 2026: 80.5% from 252 flights
- May 2026: 74.7% from 290 flights
- June 2026: 62.8% from 324 flights
- July 2026: 72.3% from 335 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 76.4% against 77.2% in the 12 months before — broadly unchanged.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 10,177 OMA → DEN 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