Route reliability record

DEN→BFL

Denver to Bakersfield

Flights: 730
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Distance: 845 mi
Carriers: 2

This route lands a B+, 2 points 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 a little over an hour on average. That rests on 730 DEN to BFL flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.

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.

On time

78.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 724 completed flights

Avg delay

70 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.14%

National rate is 1.89%

Best carrier

SkyWest

83.0% on time across 628 flights

These figures cover 730 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 2 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 BFL

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.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to BFL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	628	83.0%	64 min	0.16%	B+
United Airlinesthin sample	102	53.0%	86 min	0.00%	F+

Flight by flight

Flights on DEN to BFL

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.

SkyWest 466811:3081.4% · 365 flights

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Departure window

The best time of day to leave

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 730 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm365 flights81.4%
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm363 flights76.5%
8pm–5am2 flights—

Scale runs 70% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 11am–2pm window is the strongest at 81.4% on time. The full set of windows spans 5 points.

Explore

Filter DEN to BFL 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 BFL, the best departure window is 11am–2pm at 81.4% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 76.5%, a narrow gap of 4.9 points. All US flights leaving 11am–2pm ran 78.3%.

5–8am—
8–11am—
11am–2pm81.4%
2–5pm—
5–8pm76.5%
8pm–5am—

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 33 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 60.0% on time, 33 points below November, the best at 93.2%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 63 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 71.3%, a spread of 12 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 11,000 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
37%
Late-arriving aircraft
37%
Extreme weather
15%
National Airspace System
11%

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 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 10,762 reported delay minutes.

37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 to one.

Cancellations are rare at 0.14%, 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

7.9% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 845 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.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 86.4% on time across 728 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. 730 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 BFL after this flight

What to do with this

Booking this route

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 730 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 78.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 724 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

DEN to BFL questions

How often is DEN to BFL 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 21.1% of the 730 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.

How reliable is DEN to BFL compared with the rest of the country?

78.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 2 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.

What time of day has the fewest delays on DEN to BFL?

The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 81.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 76.5%, 5 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 BFL?

July is the weakest month at 60.0% on time, compared with 93.2% in November. Across the year that is 33 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 BFL and BFL to DEN are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.

Embed DEN to BFL’s on-time badge on your site

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<iframe src="https://delayatlas.com/embed/route/den-bfl" width="320" height="132" style="border:0;max-width:100%" loading="lazy" title="DEN to BFL on-time record"></iframe>
<p style="font:12px/1.4 sans-serif;margin:4px 0 0">DEN to BFL flight delay statistics from <a href="https://delayatlas.com/routes/den-to-bfl">DelayAtlas</a></p>

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.