Route reliability record
BUR→DEN
Burbank to Denver
- Flights
- 2,219
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 850 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 2,219 flights, of which United Airlines flew 881 at 85.9% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 64 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,196 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.59%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
85.9% on time across 881 flights
These figures cover 2,219 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 BUR to DEN
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 881 | 85.9% | 65 min | 0.45% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,294 | 82.9% | 65 min | 0.70% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 43 | 76.7% | 158 min | 0.00% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 85.9%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am292 flights94.5%
- 8am–11am721 flights88.9%
- 11am–2pm705 flights81.4%
- 2pm–5pm333 flights70.1%
- 5pm–8pm158 flights83.7%
- 8pm–5am10 flights—
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 94.5% of the time, against 70.1% for the afternoon 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 721 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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.
July is the worst month at 70.9% on time, 23 points below January, the best at 94.1%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 224 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 88.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 81.8%. 7 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 24,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%National Airspace System
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
39% 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 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 23,843 reported delay minutes.
40% 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 9,642 minutes out of 24,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.59%, 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
5.9% 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.
The 850 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.2% on time across 2,222 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,219 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. January runs 94.1% on time and July 70.9%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,196 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BUR to DEN questions
How often is BUR 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 16.0% of the 2,219 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on BUR to DEN?
United Airlines leads at 85.9% on time across 881 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 82.9%, a gap of 3 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 BUR to DEN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.5% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 70.1%, 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 BUR to DEN?
July is the weakest month at 70.9% on time, compared with 94.1% in January. Across the year that is 23 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 BUR — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record100.0%
- United Airlines on-time record85.9%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record82.9%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. BUR to DEN and DEN to BUR 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.