Route reliability record
DEN→BUR
Denver to Burbank
- Flights
- 2,128
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 850 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,128 DEN to BUR flights, of which United Airlines flew 825 at 75.2% on time.
Best time to fly DEN to BUR: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 79.1%, against 73.2% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 41 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,113 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.33%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
75.2% on time across 825 flights
These figures cover 2,128 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.0% 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 BUR
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 25 | 80.0% | 32 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 825 | 75.2% | 64 min | 0.12% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,277 | 71.7% | 54 min | 0.47% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 75.2%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on DEN to BUR
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 Burbank
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. 5 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DEN → SNADenver to Santa Ana | United Airlines | 85.2% | 85.3% | 0.16% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 2666 07:40 |
| 2. DEN → LAXDenver to Los Angeles | United Airlines | 84.0% | 84.0% | 0.00% | 5am–8am, Sat | UA 1638 08:00 |
| 3. DEN → LAXDenver to Los Angeles | Frontier Airlines | 82.8% | 83.4% | 0.75% | 5am–8am, Sun | F9 2341 06:00 |
| 4. DEN → LAXDenver to Los Angeles | Delta Air Lines | 80.1% | 81.2% | 1.34% | 5am–8am, Mon | DL 2002 07:25 |
| 5. DEN → ONTDenver to Ontario | Frontier Airlines | 79.9% | 80.3% | 0.54% | 5am–8am, Sun | F9 1261 22:29 |
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 38 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am62 flights85.5%
- 8am–11am356 flights91.8%
- 11am–2pm612 flights80.1%
- 2pm–5pm227 flights76.4%
- 5pm–8pm573 flights62.0%
- 8pm–5am298 flights53.4%
Scale runs 45% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 53.4% on time, against 91.8% for the 8am–11am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 612 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DEN to BUR 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 BUR, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 91.8% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 53.4%, a wide gap of 38.4 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am85.5%
- 8–11am91.8%
- 11am–2pm80.1%
- 2–5pm76.4%
- 5–8pm62.0%
- 8pm–5am53.4%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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 60.1% on time, 22 points below February, the best at 82.6%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 216 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 66.2%, a spread of 13 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 32,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 32,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 52 to one. The split is drawn from 32,457 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 91.8% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.33%, 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
8.0% 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.
The 850 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 84.9% on time across 2,127 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,128 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 BUR 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. February runs 82.6% on time and August 60.1%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 2,113 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to BUR questions
How often is DEN to BUR 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 26.8% of the 2,128 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 BUR?
United Airlines leads at 75.2% on time across 825 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 71.7%, a gap of 4 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 BUR?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 91.8% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 53.4%, 38 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 BUR?
August is the weakest month at 60.1% on time, compared with 82.6% in February. Across the year that is 22 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
- BUR to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Hollywood Burbank (BUR) delay statistics
- United Airlines on DEN to BUR75.2%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to BUR71.7%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.6%
- LAS to BUR, a related route78.9%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record80.0%
- United Airlines on-time record75.2%
- 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 BUR and BUR 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.