Route reliability record
DEN→BZN
Denver to Bozeman
- Flights
- 2,729
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 524 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,729 flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 393 at 88.4% on time.
SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 88.4% on time across 393 flights.
Key figures
On time
78.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,716 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.37%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
88.4% on time across 393 flights
These figures cover 2,729 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 3 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 BZN
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 88.4% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 70.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,173 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 393 | 88.4% | 59 min | 1.02% | A |
| United Airlines | 1,163 | 82.3% | 61 min | 0.09% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,173 | 70.5% | 51 min | 0.43% | C+ |
The spread between SkyWest and Southwest is 18 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 18 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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 29 points, against 18 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am203 flights90.6%
- 8am–11am525 flights90.6%
- 11am–2pm955 flights80.2%
- 2pm–5pm286 flights67.1%
- 5pm–8pm350 flights74.2%
- 8pm–5am410 flights62.0%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 62.0% on time, against 90.6% for the 5am–8am 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 955 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 66.5% on time, 22 points below October, the best at 88.7%. 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 273 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 81.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 75.1%. 6 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 51% of the 32,000 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.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
51% 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 32,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 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 32,403 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 90.6% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.37%, 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
6.2% 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 524 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 runs 76.9% on time across 2,730 flights, within about a point 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 2,729 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. October runs 88.7% on time and June 66.5%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 2,716 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to BZN questions
How often is DEN to BZN delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.9% of the 2,729 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 BZN?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 88.4% on time across 393 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 70.5%, a gap of 18 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 BZN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 62.0%, 29 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 BZN?
June is the weakest month at 66.5% on time, compared with 88.7% in October. 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
- BZN to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record88.4%
- United Airlines on-time record82.3%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record70.5%
- 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 BZN and BZN 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.