Route reliability record
DEN→ELP
Denver to El Paso
- Flights
- 1,849
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 563 mi
- Carriers
- 4
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, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,849 DEN to ELP flights, of which United Airlines flew 698 at 77.6% on time.
Best time to fly DEN to ELP: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.5% of the time and Saturday flights 79.2%, against 75.0% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
75.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,838 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.38%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
77.6% on time across 698 flights
These figures cover 1,849 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to ELP
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 77.6% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 69.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 781 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 31 | 87.1% | 72 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 339 | 81.0% | 64 min | 0.59% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 698 | 77.6% | 57 min | 0.57% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 781 | 69.7% | 56 min | 0.13% | C+ |
United leads Southwest by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Denver to El Paso
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 → ELPDenver to El Paso | United Airlines | 77.2% | 77.6% | 0.57% | 11am–2pm, Tue | — |
| 2. DEN → ELPDenver to El Paso | Southwest Airlines | 69.6% | 69.7% | 0.13% | 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 22 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am389 flights84.5%
- 11am–2pm572 flights84.3%
- 2pm–5pm131 flights73.1%
- 5pm–8pm233 flights65.2%
- 8pm–5am523 flights62.5%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 62.5% on time, against 84.5% 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 572 flights scheduled in it.
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.
June is the worst month at 56.7% on time, 29 points below January, the best at 85.4%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 173 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 79.2% on time and Thursday the weakest at 68.5%. 11 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 61% of the 26,000 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.
- 61%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
61% 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 26,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 61 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 26,412 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 84.5% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.38%, 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
8.2% 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 last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 563 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 79.2% on time across 1,848 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,849 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 ELP 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. January runs 85.4% on time and June 56.7%, a swing of 29 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,838 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to ELP questions
How often is DEN to ELP 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 25.0% of the 1,849 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 ELP?
United Airlines leads at 77.6% on time across 698 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 69.7%, a gap of 8 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 ELP?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 84.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 62.5%, 22 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 ELP?
June is the weakest month at 56.7% on time, compared with 85.4% in January. 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
- ELP to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to ELP81.0%
- United Airlines on DEN to ELP77.6%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to ELP69.7%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- DFW to ELP, a related route67.7%
- DEN to SLC, a related route77.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record87.1%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record81.0%
- United Airlines on-time record77.6%
- 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 ELP and ELP 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.