Route reliability record
DEN→CID
Denver to Cedar Rapids
- Flights
- 1,155
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 692 mi
- Carriers
- 3
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 1,155 DEN to CID flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly DEN to CID: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 85.5%, against 79.2% for the route overall.
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.
Key figures
On time
79.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,146 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.69%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
79.3% on time across 728 flights
These figures cover 1,155 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 CID
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 164 | 82.7% | 57 min | 1.22% | B |
| United Airlines | 728 | 79.3% | 80 min | 0.41% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 263 | 76.9% | 67 min | 1.14% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on DEN to CID
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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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 30 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am104 flights85.6%
- 11am–2pm383 flights84.2%
- 2pm–5pm230 flights82.5%
- 5pm–8pm366 flights74.7%
- 8pm–5am72 flights55.7%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 55.7% on time, against 85.6% 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 383 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DEN to CID 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 CID, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 85.6% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 55.7%, a wide gap of 29.9 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am85.6%
- 11am–2pm84.2%
- 2–5pm82.5%
- 5–8pm74.7%
- 8pm–5am55.7%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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 65.4% on time, 24 points below November, the best at 89.5%. 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 130 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.8%, a spread of 9 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 18,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 17,542 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 85.6% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.69%, 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
7.4% 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 692 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 runs 78.8% on time across 1,154 flights, within half 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 1,155 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 CID 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. November runs 89.5% on time and August 65.4%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,146 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to CID questions
How often is DEN to CID 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 20.8% of the 1,155 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 CID compared with the rest of the country?
79.2% 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 CID?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 85.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 55.7%, 30 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 CID?
August is the weakest month at 65.4% on time, compared with 89.5% in November. Across the year that is 24 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
- CID to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to CID82.7%
- United Airlines on DEN to CID79.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to CID76.9%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.6%
- ORD to CID, a related route67.1%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record82.7%
- United Airlines on-time record79.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record76.9%
- 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 CID and CID 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.