Route reliability record
DEN→ABQ
Denver to Albuquerque
- Flights
- 3,218
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 349 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 3,218 DEN to ABQ flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 908 at 84.4% on time.
Best time to fly DEN to ABQ: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 84.0%, against 78.3% for the route overall.
SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 84.4% on time across 908 flights.
Key figures
On time
78.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,198 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.44%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
84.4% on time across 908 flights
These figures cover 3,218 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 5 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.
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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 84.4% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 75.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,465 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 908 | 84.4% | 67 min | 0.44% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 845 | 76.8% | 63 min | 0.47% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,465 | 75.4% | 57 min | 0.41% | B+ |
SkyWest leads Southwest by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on DEN to ABQ
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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Denver to Albuquerque
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DEN → ABQDenver to Albuquerque | SkyWest Airlines | 84.0% | 84.4% | 0.44% | 8am–11am, Tue | OO 5487 08:05 |
| 2. DEN → SAFDenver to Santa Fe | SkyWest Airlines | 80.2% | 81.0% | 1.01% | 8am–11am, Tue | OO 4731 08:25 |
| 3. DEN → ABQDenver to Albuquerque | United Airlines | 76.4% | 76.8% | 0.47% | 11am–2pm, Tue | UA 484 19:25 |
| 4. DEN → ABQDenver to Albuquerque | Southwest Airlines | 75.1% | 75.4% | 0.41% | 8am–11am, 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 26 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am4 flights—
- 8am–11am721 flights92.1%
- 11am–2pm690 flights82.2%
- 2pm–5pm662 flights79.0%
- 5pm–8pm569 flights66.3%
- 8pm–5am572 flights67.3%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 92.1% of the time, against 66.3% 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 721 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DEN to ABQ by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On DEN to ABQ, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 92.1% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 66.3%, a wide gap of 25.8 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am92.1%
- 11am–2pm82.2%
- 2–5pm79.0%
- 5–8pm66.3%
- 8pm–5am67.3%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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 70.0% on time, 19 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. July was the busiest month here, with 313 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 75.8%, a spread of 8 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 42,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
50% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 42,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 to one. The split is drawn from 42,080 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 92.1% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.44%, below the national 1.89% 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
7.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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.
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 82.3% on time across 3,216 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,218 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 ABQ 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 88.9% on time and August 70.0%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 3,198 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to ABQ questions
How often is DEN to ABQ delayed?
About 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 21.7% of the 3,218 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to ABQ?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 84.4% on time across 908 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 75.4%, 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 92.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 66.3%, 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 August delays on DEN to ABQ?
August is the weakest month at 70.0% on time, compared with 88.9% in November. Across the year that is 19 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
- ABQ to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to ABQ84.4%
- United Airlines on DEN to ABQ76.8%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to ABQ75.4%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.6%
- PHX to ABQ, a related route77.9%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record84.4%
- United Airlines on-time record76.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record75.4%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.