Route reliability record
DEN→FAR
Denver to Fargo
- Flights
- 1,415
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 627 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 1,415 DEN to FAR flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly DEN to FAR: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 83.1%, against 79.7% 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
79.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,401 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.71%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
80.5% on time across 879 flights
These figures cover 1,415 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 | 173 | 87.3% | 65 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 879 | 80.5% | 74 min | 1.14% | B |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 363 | 74.3% | 72 min | 0.00% | 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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am384 flights81.8%
- 11am–2pm484 flights87.0%
- 2pm–5pm28 flights—
- 5pm–8pm363 flights74.3%
- 8pm–5am155 flights65.4%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 87.0% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 65.4%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 484 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DEN to FAR 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 FAR, the best departure window is 11am–2pm at 87.0% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 65.4%, a wide gap of 21.6 points. All US flights leaving 11am–2pm ran 78.3%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am81.8%
- 11am–2pm87.0%
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm74.3%
- 8pm–5am65.4%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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.
January is the weak month at 70.3% on time, against 90.2% in April. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. July was the busiest month here, with 140 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 75.7%, a spread of 7 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 21,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 14%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 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 20,649 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 7,756 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.71%, 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
8.4% 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 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.6% on time across 1,413 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 1,415 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 January 70.3%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 1,401 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to FAR questions
How often is DEN to FAR 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 20.3% of the 1,415 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 FAR compared with the rest of the country?
79.7% 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 FAR?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 87.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 65.4%, 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 January delays on DEN to FAR?
January is the weakest month at 70.3% on time, compared with 90.2% in April. Across the year that is 20 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 FAR87.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to FAR80.5%
- United Airlines on DEN to FAR74.3%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.6%
- ORD to FAR, a related route69.5%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record87.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record80.5%
- United Airlines on-time record74.3%
- 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 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.