Carrier route record

ASANC→DEN

Alaska Airlines · Anchorage to Denver

Flights: 128
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 17%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.

Alaska on ANC to DEN earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 45 minutes. That rests on 128 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's ANC to DEN record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 91 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 128 completed flights

Avg delay

44 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.5%

Every carrier on ANC to DEN, 735 flights

These figures cover 128 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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

Alaska against every carrier on ANC to DEN

Alaska flew 128 of the 735 flights on ANC to DEN, about 17% of it. Its 86.7% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 86.7% to Southwest at 59.6%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on ANC to DEN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Alaska Airlines (this page)thin sample	128	86.7%	44 min	0.00%	A+
United Airlines	560	83.5%	71 min	1.25%	B
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	47	59.6%	62 min	0.00%	D+

Departure window

When Alaska runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 128 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Alaska's ANC to DEN record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 86.7% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Alaska on ANC to DEN through the year

Jul–Sep 202575 flights85.3%
Apr–Jun 202653 flights88.7%

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 86.7% on time across 128 flights.

Split by quarter, Alaska on ANC to DEN logged 75 flights in Jul–Sep 2025 and 53 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 86.7% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Alaska 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 748 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
36%
National Airspace System
32%
Extreme weather
25%
Late-arriving aircraft
7%

Extreme weather accounts for 25% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 4.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 748 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 271 of the 748 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.3% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

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 73.8% on time across 128 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 128 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 Alaska on ANC to DEN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 128 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 86.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 128 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures