Route reliability record
DEN→BFL
Denver to Bakersfield
- Flights
- 731
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 845 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, level with 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 731 DEN to BFL flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
78.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 724 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.27%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
79.1% on time across 690 flights
These figures cover 731 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 690 | 79.1% | 74 min | 0.29% | B+ |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 41 | 62.5% | 68 min | 0.00% | D+ |
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.
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 731 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm366 flights80.6%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm363 flights75.8%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 11am–2pm window is the strongest at 80.6% on time. The full set of windows spans 5 points.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 37 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 56.7% on time, 37 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 81.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 71.0%. 10 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 12,000 reported delay minutes.
- 33%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 15%Extreme weather
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 11,560 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.27%, 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
7.9% 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 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. 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 86.2% on time across 729 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. 731 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. 731 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 78.2% 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?
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 21.8% of the 731 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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?
78.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point 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 80.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 75.8%, 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 56.7% on time, compared with 93.2% in November. Across the year that is 37 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
- BFL to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- PHX to BFL, a related route80.1%
- DEN to SLC, a related route77.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record79.1%
- United Airlines on-time record62.5%
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
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
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.