Route reliability record
DEN→CMH
Denver to Columbus
- Flights
- 1,776
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,154 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten 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 1,776 DEN to CMH flights, of which United Airlines flew 728 at 83.1% on time.
Best time to fly DEN to CMH: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.4% of the time and Tuesday flights 79.6%, against 72.9% 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 44 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,756 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.73%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
83.1% on time across 728 flights
These figures cover 1,776 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.3% 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 CMH
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 83.1% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 63.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 923 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 728 | 83.1% | 65 min | 0.69% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 125 | 80.8% | 91 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 923 | 63.9% | 53 min | 0.87% | D+ |
The spread between United and Southwest is 19 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 19 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Flights on DEN to CMH
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 Columbus
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DEN → CMHDenver to Columbus | United Airlines | 82.5% | 83.1% | 0.69% | 8am–11am, Tue | UA 480 09:35 |
| 2. DEN → CMHDenver to Columbus | Southwest Airlines | 63.3% | 63.9% | 0.87% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
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 25 points, against 19 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am14 flights—
- 8am–11am598 flights84.4%
- 11am–2pm205 flights77.5%
- 2pm–5pm275 flights63.4%
- 5pm–8pm646 flights65.6%
- 8pm–5am38 flights59.5%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 59.5% on time, against 84.4% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 646 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DEN to CMH 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 CMH, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 84.4% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 59.5%, a wide gap of 24.9 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am84.4%
- 11am–2pm77.5%
- 2–5pm63.4%
- 5–8pm65.6%
- 8pm–5am59.5%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 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 55.6% on time, 29 points below November, the best at 85.0%. 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 166 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.6%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 28,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 0%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. Across 28,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 53 to one. The split is drawn from 27,526 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 84.4% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.73%, 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
8.3% 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 1,154 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 79.4% on time across 1,776 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,776 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 CMH 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 85.0% on time and August 55.6%, a swing of 29 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,756 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to CMH questions
How often is DEN to CMH 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 27.1% of the 1,776 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 CMH?
United Airlines leads at 83.1% on time across 728 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 63.9%, a gap of 19 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 CMH?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 84.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 59.5%, 25 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 CMH?
August is the weakest month at 55.6% on time, compared with 85.0% in November. Across the year that is 29 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
- CMH to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) delay statistics
- United Airlines on DEN to CMH83.1%
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to CMH80.8%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to CMH63.9%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.6%
- ORD to CMH, a related route73.5%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- United Airlines on-time record83.1%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record80.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record63.9%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. DEN to CMH and CMH 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.