Route reliability record
DEN→ASE
Denver to Aspen
- Flights
- 2,742
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 125 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.1% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 2,742 DEN to ASE flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly DEN to ASE: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 82.8%, against 74.2% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,563 completed flights
Avg delay
96 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.11%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
74.2% on time across 2,742 flights
These figures cover 2,742 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to ASE
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 | 2,742 | 74.2% | 96 min | 5.11% | C− |
Flight by flight
Flights on DEN to ASE
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 Aspen
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. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DEN → GUCDenver to Gunnison | SkyWest Airlines | 79.9% | 80.5% | 0.80% | 11am–2pm, Tue | OO 5343 11:30 |
| 2. DEN → EGEDenver to Eagle | United Airlines | 77.6% | 77.8% | 0.21% | 8pm–5am, Tue | UA 1378 11:30 |
| 3. DEN → ASEDenver to Aspen | SkyWest Airlines | 70.4% | 74.2% | 5.11% | 5am–8am, Tue | OO 5782 09:50 |
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 16 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am106 flights86.5%
- 8am–11am455 flights77.6%
- 11am–2pm734 flights72.5%
- 2pm–5pm501 flights73.9%
- 5pm–8pm662 flights70.8%
- 8pm–5am284 flights77.2%
Scale runs 60% to 90%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 86.5% of the time, against 70.8% for the evening window. That is 16 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 734 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DEN to ASE 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 ASE, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 86.5% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 70.8%, a wide gap of 15.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am86.5%
- 8–11am77.6%
- 11am–2pm72.5%
- 2–5pm73.9%
- 5–8pm70.8%
- 8pm–5am77.2%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 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.
July is the worst month at 58.2% on time, 29 points below November, the best at 87.6%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 310 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.2%, a spread of 15 points.
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 63,000 reported delay minutes.
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%National Airspace System
- 24%Carrier
- 22%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 22% 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 3.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 63,247 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 5.11%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
11.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 125 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 runs 76.7% on time across 2,742 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 2,742 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 ASE after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.11% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 2,563 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to ASE questions
How often is DEN to ASE delayed?
About 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 25.8% of the 2,742 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is DEN to ASE compared with the rest of the country?
74.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 3 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DEN to ASE?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 70.8%, 16 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 ASE?
July is the weakest month at 58.2% on time, compared with 87.6% in November. Across the year that is 29 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
- ASE to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.6%
- LAX to ASE, a related route77.9%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record74.2%
- Flying to ski country: which routes into the mountains run on time
- The US routes with the most cancellations
Direction matters. DEN to ASE and ASE 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.