Route reliability record
DEN→DFW
Denver to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Flights
- 6,063
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 641 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 6,063 DEN to DFW flights, of which United Airlines flew 1,878 at 77.5% on time.
Best time to fly DEN to DFW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 79.2%, against 75.8% for the route overall.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 77.5% on time across 1,878 flights.
Key figures
On time
75.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 5,930 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.80%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
77.5% on time across 1,878 flights
These figures cover 6,063 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.6% 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 DFW
The three carriers here are closely matched: 3 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 | 22 | 90.9% | 79 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 1,878 | 77.5% | 68 min | 0.59% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,200 | 76.0% | 71 min | 0.92% | B+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 24 | 75.0% | 81 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 2,939 | 74.5% | 97 min | 2.96% | C |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 77.5%, 3 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 DFW
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 Dallas-Fort Worth
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. 1 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DEN → DFWDenver to Dallas-Fort Worth | United Airlines | 77.0% | 77.5% | 0.59% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 1350 09:35 |
| 2. DEN → DFWDenver to Dallas-Fort Worth | Frontier Airlines | 75.3% | 76.0% | 0.92% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 3. DEN → DFWDenver to Dallas-Fort Worth | American Airlines | 72.3% | 74.5% | 2.96% | 5am–8am, Tue | AA 852 08:00 |
| 4. DEN → DALDenver to Dallas | Southwest Airlines | 70.4% | 71.3% | 1.25% | 5am–8am, 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 28 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am1,239 flights88.5%
- 8am–11am1,706 flights82.4%
- 11am–2pm685 flights71.9%
- 2pm–5pm1,054 flights68.6%
- 5pm–8pm893 flights61.0%
- 8pm–5am486 flights68.2%
Scale runs 55% to 95%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 61.0% on time, against 88.5% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 1,706 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DEN to DFW 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 DFW, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 88.5% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 61.0%, a wide gap of 27.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am88.5%
- 8–11am82.4%
- 11am–2pm71.9%
- 2–5pm68.6%
- 5–8pm61.0%
- 8pm–5am68.2%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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 63.1% on time, 18 points below April, the best at 81.5%. 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 547 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.0%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 119,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
50% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 119,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 to one. The split is drawn from 119,464 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 88.5% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.80% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.40%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
9.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 641 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 70.5% on time across 6,059 flights, 5 points below 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 6,063 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 DFW 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. April runs 81.5% on time and June 63.1%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 5,930 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to DFW questions
How often is DEN to DFW 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 24.2% of the 6,063 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to DFW?
United Airlines leads at 77.5% on time across 1,878 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 74.5%, a gap of 3 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 DFW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 88.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 61.0%, 28 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 DFW?
June is the weakest month at 63.1% on time, compared with 81.5% in April. Across the year that is 18 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
- DFW to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- United Airlines on DEN to DFW77.5%
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to DFW76.0%
- American Airlines on DEN to DFW74.5%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.6%
- ORD to DFW, a related route70.4%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record90.9%
- United Airlines on-time record77.5%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record76.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. DEN to DFW and DFW 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.