Route reliability record
DEN→FAR
Denver to Fargo
- Flights
- 1,428
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 627 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,428 DEN to FAR flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly DEN to FAR: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.3% of the time and Wednesday flights 82.6%, against 77.7% 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
77.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,410 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.91%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
78.1% on time across 881 flights
These figures cover 1,428 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.4% 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 FAR
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 | 183 | 84.2% | 69 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 881 | 78.1% | 75 min | 1.36% | B |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 364 | 73.7% | 81 min | 0.27% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on DEN to FAR
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.
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 26 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am377 flights79.3%
- 11am–2pm502 flights85.3%
- 2pm–5pm28 flights—
- 5pm–8pm364 flights73.7%
- 8pm–5am156 flights59.2%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 59.2% on time, against 85.3% for the 11am–2pm 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 502 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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.
July is the worst month at 65.5% on time, 25 points below April, the best at 90.2%. 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 146 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 74.3%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 24,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
41% 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 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 23,927 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 8,805 of the 24,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.91% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.35%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 627 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 70.9% on time across 1,425 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,428 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 FAR 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 90.2% on time and July 65.5%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,410 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to FAR questions
How often is DEN to FAR delayed?
Roughly 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 22.3% of the 1,428 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is DEN to FAR compared with the rest of the country?
77.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point 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 FAR?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 85.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 59.2%, 26 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 July delays on DEN to FAR?
July is the weakest month at 65.5% on time, compared with 90.2% in April. Across the year that is 25 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
- FAR to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to FAR84.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to FAR78.1%
- United Airlines on DEN to FAR73.7%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- ORD to FAR, a related route69.5%
- DEN to SLC, a related route77.5%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record84.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record78.1%
- United Airlines on-time record73.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. DEN to FAR and FAR to DEN are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed DEN to FAR’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.