Route reliability record
DEN→GEG
Denver to Spokane
- Flights
- 2,062
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 836 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, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 2,062 DEN to GEG flights, of which United Airlines flew 833 at 74.3% on time.
Best time to fly DEN to GEG: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 79.2%, against 75.2% 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
75.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,051 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.34%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
74.3% on time across 833 flights
These figures cover 2,062 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to GEG
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 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 | 250 | 90.3% | 47 min | 0.80% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 122 | 86.1% | 34 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 833 | 74.3% | 53 min | 0.24% | C+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 857 | 70.1% | 48 min | 0.35% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 74.3%, 4 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 GEG
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Denver to Spokane
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 → GEGDenver to Spokane | United Airlines | 74.1% | 74.3% | 0.24% | 11am–2pm, Sat | UA 295 11:15 |
| 2. DEN → GEGDenver to Spokane | Southwest Airlines | 69.9% | 70.1% | 0.35% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 34 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am31 flights87.1%
- 8am–11am448 flights86.4%
- 11am–2pm677 flights84.5%
- 2pm–5pm178 flights64.0%
- 5pm–8pm387 flights69.4%
- 8pm–5am341 flights53.1%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 53.1% on time, against 87.1% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 677 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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 60.2% on time, 28 points below April, the best at 87.9%. 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 198 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 70.5%. 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 52% of the 25,000 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.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
52% 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 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 26 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 25,367 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 87.1% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.34%, 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
6.3% 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 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 836 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 83.8% on time across 2,063 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,062 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 GEG 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 87.9% on time and July 60.2%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,051 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to GEG questions
How often is DEN to GEG 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 24.8% of the 2,062 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to GEG?
United Airlines leads at 74.3% on time across 833 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 70.1%, a gap of 4 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 GEG?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 53.1%, 34 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 GEG?
July is the weakest month at 60.2% on time, compared with 87.9% in April. Across the year that is 28 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
- GEG to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to GEG90.3%
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to GEG86.1%
- United Airlines on DEN to GEG74.3%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to GEG70.1%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- SEA to GEG, a related route82.5%
- DEN to SLC, a related route77.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record90.3%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record86.1%
- 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 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. DEN to GEG and GEG to DEN are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed DEN to GEG’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.