Route reliability record
DEN→HDN
Denver to Hayden
- Flights
- 1,434
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 141 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,434 DEN to HDN flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 439 at 72.5% on time.
Best time to fly DEN to HDN: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 83.2%, against 72.9% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 44 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,423 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.49%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
72.5% on time across 439 flights
These figures cover 1,434 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to HDN
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point 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 | 215 | 77.6% | 45 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 439 | 72.5% | 69 min | 0.46% | C+ |
| United Airlines | 780 | 71.9% | 76 min | 0.64% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 72.5%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on DEN to HDN
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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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Denver to Hayden
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 → HDNDenver to Hayden | Southwest Airlines | 72.2% | 72.5% | 0.46% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. DEN → HDNDenver to Hayden | United Airlines | 71.4% | 71.9% | 0.64% | 11am–2pm, Tue | UA 2045 11:30 |
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 28 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am153 flights81.0%
- 11am–2pm704 flights77.3%
- 2pm–5pm34 flights52.9%
- 5pm–8pm543 flights66.3%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 81.0% of the time, against 52.9% for the afternoon window. That is 28 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 704 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DEN to HDN 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 HDN, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 81.0% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 52.9%, a wide gap of 28.1 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am81.0%
- 11am–2pm77.3%
- 2–5pm52.9%
- 5–8pm66.3%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 31 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.
June is the worst month at 59.2% on time, 31 points below November, the best at 89.8%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 157 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.2% on time and Thursday the weakest at 68.0%, a spread of 15 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 27,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 26,585 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 81.0% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.49%, 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
9.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 141 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.3% on time across 1,433 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,434 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 HDN 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. November runs 89.8% on time and June 59.2%, a swing of 31 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,423 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to HDN questions
How often is DEN to HDN 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 27.1% of the 1,434 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to HDN?
Southwest Airlines leads at 72.5% on time across 439 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 71.9%, a gap of half a point. 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 HDN?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 81.0% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 52.9%, 28 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 June delays on DEN to HDN?
June is the weakest month at 59.2% on time, compared with 89.8% in November. Across the year that is 31 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
- HDN to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to HDN77.6%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to HDN72.5%
- United Airlines on DEN to HDN71.9%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.6%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- DEN to LAX, a related route78.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record77.6%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record72.5%
- United Airlines on-time record71.9%
- Flying to ski country: which routes into the mountains run on time
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DEN to HDN and HDN 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.