Route reliability record

ABQ→DEN

Albuquerque to Denver

Flights: 3,175
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 349 mi
Carriers: 3

This route lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 3,175 flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 895 at 85.6% on time.

SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 85.6% on time across 895 flights.

On time

82.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,148 completed flights

Avg delay

63 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.72%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

SkyWest

85.6% on time across 895 flights

These figures cover 3,175 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 ABQ to DEN

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 85.6% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 79.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,463 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ABQ to DEN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	895	85.6%	57 min	0.78%	A+
United Airlines	817	83.5%	78 min	0.86%	B+
Southwest Airlines	1,463	79.1%	59 min	0.62%	B+

SkyWest leads Southwest by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

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 24 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am972 flights93.2%
8am–11am335 flights87.7%
11am–2pm707 flights85.1%
2pm–5pm461 flights69.1%
5pm–8pm637 flights69.5%
8pm–5am63 flights68.9%

Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.2% of the time, against 68.9% for the overnight window. That is 24 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 972 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 24 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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.November best, July worst

July is the worst month at 68.0% on time, 24 points below November, the best at 91.5%. 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 301 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 85.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 77.8%. 8 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 35,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
40%
National Airspace System
34%
Carrier
21%
Extreme weather
5%
Security
0%

40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 35,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 35,456 reported delay minutes.

34% 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 12,000 minutes out of 35,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.72%, 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

5.7% 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 are the about an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 349 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.4% on time across 3,176 flights, 5 points below 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.

The sample behind these figures is 3,175 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.

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 91.5% on time and July 68.0%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 3,148 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

ABQ to DEN questions

How often is ABQ to DEN delayed?

About one flight in six arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.9% of the 3,175 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.

Which airline is most reliable on ABQ to DEN?

SkyWest Airlines leads at 85.6% on time across 895 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 79.1%, a gap of 7 points. 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 ABQ to DEN?

The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 68.9%, 24 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 ABQ to DEN?

July is the weakest month at 68.0% on time, compared with 91.5% in November. Across the year that is 24 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

Direction matters. ABQ to DEN and DEN to ABQ are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures