Route reliability record
CLE→DEN
Cleveland to Denver
- Flights
- 1,840
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,201 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 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 1,840 CLE to DEN flights, of which United Airlines flew 942 at 88.1% on time.
Best time to fly CLE to DEN: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 85.4%, against 82.0% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 44 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,824 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.43%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
88.1% on time across 942 flights
These figures cover 1,840 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 CLE to DEN
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 88.1% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 78.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 604 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 942 | 88.1% | 64 min | 0.11% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 604 | 78.1% | 59 min | 0.33% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 294 | 70.2% | 61 min | 1.70% | C |
United leads Southwest by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on CLE 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Cleveland to Denver
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. CLE → DENCleveland to Denver | United Airlines | 88.0% | 88.1% | 0.11% | 8am–11am, Tue | UA 486 16:39 |
| 2. CLE → DENCleveland to Denver | Southwest Airlines | 77.8% | 78.1% | 0.33% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 38 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am290 flights94.8%
- 8am–11am491 flights91.8%
- 11am–2pm242 flights86.7%
- 2pm–5pm420 flights81.0%
- 5pm–8pm276 flights57.0%
- 8pm–5am121 flights61.0%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.0% on time, against 94.8% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 491 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 14 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 75.4% on time, 14 points below November, the best at 89.4%. 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 186 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 79.3%. 6 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 20,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 20,032 reported delay minutes.
35% 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 6,975 minutes out of 20,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.43%, 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 last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,201 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 75.5% on time across 1,842 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,840 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DEN after this flight
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 89.4% on time and August 75.4%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,824 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLE to DEN questions
How often is CLE 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 18.0% of the 1,840 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on CLE to DEN?
United Airlines leads at 88.1% on time across 942 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 78.1%, a gap of 10 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 CLE to DEN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 57.0%, 38 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 CLE to DEN?
August is the weakest month at 75.4% on time, compared with 89.4% in November. Across the year that is 14 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 CLE — the return legseparate record
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- United Airlines on CLE to DEN88.1%
- Southwest Airlines on CLE to DEN78.1%
- Frontier Airlines on CLE to DEN70.2%
- CLE to ORD, a related route74.6%
- PHX to DEN, a related route77.2%
- CLE to ATL, a related route85.4%
- United Airlines on-time record88.1%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record78.1%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record70.2%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. CLE to DEN and DEN to CLE 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.