Route reliability record
BDL→DEN
Hartford to Denver
- Flights
- 887
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,671 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 887 BDL to DEN flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly BDL to DEN: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Monday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.1% of the time and Monday flights 87.1%, against 82.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 53 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 872 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.01%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
84.5% on time across 727 flights
These figures cover 887 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 BDL 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 727 | 84.5% | 75 min | 0.96% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 160 | 73.9% | 57 min | 1.25% | C |
Flight by flight
Flights on BDL 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 36 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am291 flights91.7%
- 8am–11am154 flights94.1%
- 11am–2pm42 flights58.5%
- 2pm–5pm384 flights75.3%
- 5pm–8pm16 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 100%. 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 58.5% on time against 94.1% for 8am–11am. 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 384 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BDL 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 BDL to DEN, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 94.1% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 58.5%, a wide gap of 35.6 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am91.7%
- 8–11am94.1%
- 11am–2pm58.5%
- 2–5pm75.3%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 50% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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.
August is the worst month at 65.5% on time, 28 points below October, the best at 93.5%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 87.1% on time and Saturday the weakest at 75.2%, a spread of 12 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 11,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%National Airspace System
- 26%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 10,678 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 94.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.01% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.68%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.3% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,671 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 75.2% on time across 887 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. 887 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. 887 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 82.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 872 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BDL to DEN questions
How often is BDL to DEN delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.4% of the 887 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is BDL to DEN compared with the rest of the country?
82.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 5 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BDL to DEN?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 94.1% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 58.5%, 36 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 August delays on BDL to DEN?
August is the weakest month at 65.5% on time, compared with 93.5% in October. Across the year that is 28 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 BDL — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- United Airlines on BDL to DEN84.5%
- Southwest Airlines on BDL to DEN73.9%
- BDL to ORD, a related route75.9%
- PHX to DEN, a related route76.7%
- BDL to ATL, a related route84.2%
- United Airlines on-time record84.5%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record73.9%
- 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. BDL to DEN and DEN to BDL 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.