Route reliability record
DEN→BUR
Denver to Burbank
- Flights
- 2,222
- Period
- July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,222 flights, of which United Airlines flew 881 at 75.7% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 44 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,206 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.36%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
75.7% on time across 881 flights
These figures cover 2,222 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
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 | 43 | 79.1% | 30 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 881 | 75.7% | 62 min | 0.23% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,297 | 71.3% | 55 min | 0.46% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 75.7%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am64 flights87.5%
- 8am–11am369 flights91.5%
- 11am–2pm624 flights78.7%
- 2pm–5pm309 flights75.5%
- 5pm–8pm577 flights62.2%
- 8pm–5am279 flights53.6%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 53.6% on time, against 91.5% 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 624 flights scheduled in it.
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.
June is the worst month at 60.4% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 224 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 65.6%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 34,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 34,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 53 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 33,986 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 91.5% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.36%, 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
7.8% 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 are the about an hour kind, 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. 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 84.0% on time across 2,219 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,222 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.
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 June 60.4%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 2,206 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 arrive 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 2,222 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to BUR?
United Airlines leads at 75.7% on time across 881 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 71.3%, 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 91.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 53.6%, 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 June delays on DEN to BUR?
June is the weakest month at 60.4% 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
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record79.1%
- United Airlines on-time record75.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 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.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.