Route reliability record
DEN→GRR
Denver to Grand Rapids
- Flights
- 1,235
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,015 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B+, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That rests on 1,235 DEN to GRR flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Best time to fly DEN to GRR: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 81.5%, against 76.5% 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
76.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,228 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.24%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
78.3% on time across 727 flights
These figures cover 1,235 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 2 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to GRR
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 | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 148 | 85.1% | 72 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 727 | 78.3% | 56 min | 0.28% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 359 | 69.5% | 43 min | 0.28% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on DEN to GRR
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.
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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 23 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am407 flights87.7%
- 11am–2pm143 flights72.7%
- 2pm–5pm209 flights85.6%
- 5pm–8pm475 flights64.3%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.3% on time, against 87.7% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 475 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DEN to GRR 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 GRR, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 87.7% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 64.3%, a wide gap of 23.4 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am87.7%
- 11am–2pm72.7%
- 2–5pm85.6%
- 5–8pm64.3%
- 8pm–5am—
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 22 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 63.7% on time, against 85.3% 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. August was the busiest month here, with 121 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.9%, a spread of 12 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
50% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 35 to one. The split is drawn from 15,062 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 87.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.24%, 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
6.7% 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 roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,015 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 runs 76.1% on time across 1,234 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,235 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 GRR 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 85.3% on time and December 63.7%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,228 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to GRR questions
How often is DEN to GRR 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 23.5% of the 1,235 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is DEN to GRR compared with the rest of the country?
76.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of about a point against it. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DEN to GRR?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 87.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 64.3%, 23 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 GRR?
December is the weakest month at 63.7% on time, compared with 85.3% in April. Across the year that is 22 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
- GRR to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to GRR85.1%
- United Airlines on DEN to GRR78.3%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to GRR69.5%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.6%
- ORD to GRR, a related route69.5%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record85.1%
- United Airlines on-time record78.3%
- 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 GRR and GRR 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.