Route reliability record

DEN→ABQ

Denver to Albuquerque

Flights: 3,176
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 349 mi
Carriers: 3

This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrive 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 3,176 flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 895 at 83.5% on time.

SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 83.5% on time across 895 flights.

On time

77.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,156 completed flights

Avg delay

58 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.50%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

SkyWest

83.5% on time across 895 flights

These figures cover 3,176 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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 DEN to ABQ

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 83.5% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 74.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,464 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to ABQ
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	895	83.5%	62 min	0.78%	B+
United Airlines	817	76.7%	63 min	0.37%	B+
Southwest Airlines	1,464	74.1%	54 min	0.41%	C+

SkyWest leads Southwest by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

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 26 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am38 flights84.2%
8am–11am684 flights91.9%
11am–2pm679 flights80.9%
2pm–5pm636 flights77.1%
5pm–8pm572 flights66.0%
8pm–5am567 flights67.3%

Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 91.9% of the time, against 66.0% for the evening window. That is 26 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 684 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 26 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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.November best, July worst

July is the worst month at 63.4% on time, 26 points below November, the best at 88.9%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 300 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.0%. 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 41,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
53%
Carrier
30%
National Airspace System
13%
Extreme weather
4%
Security
0%

53% 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 41,000 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 41,463 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 91.9% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.50%, 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

7.3% 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.

At 349 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.1% on time across 3,175 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 3,176 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. November runs 88.9% on time and July 63.4%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 3,156 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

DEN to ABQ questions

How often is DEN to ABQ delayed?

Roughly one flight in four arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.6% of the 3,176 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.

Which airline is most reliable on DEN to ABQ?

SkyWest Airlines leads at 83.5% on time across 895 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 74.1%, a gap of 9 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 DEN to ABQ?

The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 91.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 66.0%, 26 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 DEN to ABQ?

July is the weakest month at 63.4% on time, compared with 88.9% in November. Across the year that is 26 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

Direction matters. DEN to ABQ and ABQ to DEN 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.

Key figures