Route reliability record
CVG→DEN
Cincinnati to Denver
- Flights
- 1,521
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,069 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,521 CVG to DEN flights, of which United Airlines flew 728 at 85.8% on time.
Best time to fly CVG to DEN: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.8% of the time and Wednesday flights 84.7%, against 81.6% 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 40 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,497 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.99%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
85.8% on time across 728 flights
These figures cover 1,521 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 CVG to DEN
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 728 | 85.8% | 81 min | 0.69% | A+ |
| Allegiant Airthin sample | 26 | 84.6% | 35 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 403 | 82.1% | 96 min | 1.24% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 364 | 72.3% | 60 min | 1.37% | C |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 85.8%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on CVG 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 Cincinnati 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. CVG → DENCincinnati to Denver | United Airlines | 85.2% | 85.8% | 0.69% | 8am–11am, Sun | UA 1666 09:00 |
| 2. CVG → DENCincinnati to Denver | Frontier Airlines | 81.1% | 82.1% | 1.24% | 5am–8am, Fri | F9 3725 06:05 |
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 24 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am207 flights89.8%
- 8am–11am414 flights86.9%
- 11am–2pm176 flights78.7%
- 2pm–5pm472 flights82.3%
- 5pm–8pm149 flights66.7%
- 8pm–5am103 flights66.0%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.8% of the time, against 66.0% for the overnight 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 472 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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.
December is the weak month at 69.4% on time, against 90.6% in November. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. July was the busiest month here, with 149 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 78.4%. 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 21,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 27%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
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 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 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 21,224 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 89.8% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 0.99% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.59%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.0% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,069 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 77.6% on time across 1,520 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,521 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 90.6% on time and December 69.4%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,497 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CVG to DEN questions
How often is CVG to DEN delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.4% of the 1,521 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on CVG to DEN?
United Airlines leads at 85.8% on time across 728 flights. Frontier Airlines is at the other end on 82.1%, a gap of 4 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 CVG to DEN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.8% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 66.0%, 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 December delays on CVG to DEN?
December is the weakest month at 69.4% on time, compared with 90.6% in November. Across the year that is 21 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 CVG — the return legseparate record
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- United Airlines on CVG to DEN85.8%
- Frontier Airlines on CVG to DEN82.1%
- Southwest Airlines on CVG to DEN72.3%
- CVG to ORD, a related route70.2%
- PHX to DEN, a related route77.2%
- CVG to ATL, a related route86.4%
- United Airlines on-time record85.8%
- Allegiant Air on-time record84.6%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record82.1%
- 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. CVG to DEN and DEN to CVG are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed CVG to DEN’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.