Route reliability record
COD→DEN
Cody to Denver
- Flights
- 932
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 391 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 932 COD to DEN flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly COD to DEN: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 74.4%, against 71.6% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 60 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 912 completed flights
Avg delay
108 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.18%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
71.6% on time across 932 flights
These figures cover 932 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on COD 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 932 | 71.6% | 108 min | 1.18% | C |
Flight by flight
Flights on COD 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.
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 35 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am224 flights85.1%
- 8am–11am217 flights66.4%
- 11am–2pm286 flights77.0%
- 2pm–5pm78 flights62.7%
- 5pm–8pm127 flights49.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 49.6% on time, against 85.1% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 286 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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.
Delays peak in September, when the on-time rate falls to 62.1%. January is the strongest month at 80.3%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 18 points. July was the busiest month here, with 123 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 65.9%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 45% of the 28,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 45%Carrier
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%National Airspace System
- 15%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 2.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 27,993 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, 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 13,000 of the 28,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.18% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.97%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 391 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.4% on time across 932 flights, 8 points above 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 932 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. 932 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 71.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 912 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
COD to DEN questions
How often is COD to DEN delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 28.4% of the 932 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is COD to DEN compared with the rest of the country?
71.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 6 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on COD to DEN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 49.6%, 35 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 September delays on COD to DEN?
September is the weakest month at 62.1% on time, compared with 80.3% in January. Across the year that is 18 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 COD — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- PHX to DEN, a related route77.2%
- SLC to DEN, a related route77.8%
- LAX to DEN, a related route81.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record71.6%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. COD to DEN and DEN to COD 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.