Route reliability record
DEN→FCA
Denver to Kalispell
- Flights
- 1,063
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 752 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,063 DEN to FCA flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly DEN to FCA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.4% of the time and Tuesday flights 85.6%, against 82.1% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 45 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,054 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.66%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
79.3% on time across 848 flights
These figures cover 1,063 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 3 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to FCA
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 215 | 93.0% | 65 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 848 | 79.3% | 58 min | 0.83% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on DEN to FCA
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 17 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–8am157 flights92.4%
- 8am–11am1 flights—
- 11am–2pm421 flights82.5%
- 2pm–5pm120 flights85.0%
- 5pm–8pm343 flights75.7%
- 8pm–5am21 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.4% of the time, against 75.7% for the evening window. That is 17 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 421 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 32 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.
December is the weak month at 63.2% on time, against 94.9% 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 124 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.6% on time and Saturday the weakest at 77.0%. 9 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 45% of the 11,000 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.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
45% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 11,047 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 92.4% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.66%, 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
5.6% 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 752 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 runs 83.9% on time across 1,063 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,063 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in FCA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,063 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 82.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,054 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to FCA questions
How often is DEN to FCA delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.9% of the 1,063 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DEN to FCA compared with the rest of the country?
82.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 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 FCA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 75.7%, 17 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 December delays on DEN to FCA?
December is the weakest month at 63.2% on time, compared with 94.9% in April. Across the year that is 32 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
- FCA to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to FCA93.0%
- United Airlines on DEN to FCA79.3%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- SLC to FCA, a related route90.5%
- DEN to SLC, a related route77.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record93.0%
- United Airlines on-time record79.3%
- 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 FCA and FCA 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.