Route reliability record
ANC→DEN
Anchorage to Denver
- Flights
- 852
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 2,405 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 about an hour on average. That rests on 852 ANC to DEN flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly ANC to DEN: a 2pm–5pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 89.4%, 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 841 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.94%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
84.4% on time across 615 flights
These figures cover 852 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 ANC to DEN
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 128 | 89.8% | 30 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 615 | 84.4% | 74 min | 1.30% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 109 | 55.0% | 64 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on ANC 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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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 17 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am30 flights—
- 8am–11am80 flights75.0%
- 11am–2pm92 flights73.9%
- 2pm–5pm67 flights91.0%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am583 flights82.0%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 73.9% on time against 91.0% for 2pm–5pm. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 583 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ANC 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 ANC to DEN, the best departure window is 2pm–5pm at 91.0% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 73.9%, a wide gap of 17.1 points. All US flights leaving 2pm–5pm ran 71.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am75.0%
- 11am–2pm73.9%
- 2–5pm91.0%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am82.0%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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.
January is the weak month at 69.4% on time, against 95.3% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. July was the busiest month here, with 157 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 89.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 76.3%, a spread of 13 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 10,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 39%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 to one. The split is drawn from 10,451 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,039 of the 10,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.94% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.35%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.5% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 2,405 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.1% on time across 852 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 852 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DEN after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 852 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 81.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 841 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ANC to DEN questions
How often is ANC 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 852 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is ANC to DEN compared with the rest of the country?
81.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 4 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ANC to DEN?
The 2pm–5pm departure window is the strongest at 91.0% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 73.9%, 17 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 January delays on ANC to DEN?
January is the weakest month at 69.4% on time, compared with 95.3% in September. Across the year that is 26 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 ANC — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Alaska Airlines on ANC to DEN89.8%
- United Airlines on ANC to DEN84.4%
- Southwest Airlines on ANC to DEN55.0%
- ANC to SEA, a related route86.9%
- PHX to DEN, a related route76.7%
- ANC to FAI, a related route88.6%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record89.8%
- United Airlines on-time record84.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record55.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. ANC to DEN and DEN to ANC 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.