Route reliability record
DEN→HOU
Denver to Houston
- Flights
- 2,341
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 883 mi
- Carriers
- 1
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 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,341 DEN to HOU flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly DEN to HOU: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 80.5%, against 75.0% 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
75.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,326 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.56%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
75.0% on time across 2,341 flights
These figures cover 2,341 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 HOU
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 2,341 | 75.0% | 56 min | 0.56% | B+ |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Denver to Houston
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DEN → IAHDenver to Houston | United Airlines | 79.5% | 79.7% | 0.26% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 320 05:00 |
| 2. DEN → IAHDenver to Houston | Frontier Airlines | 78.9% | 79.3% | 0.48% | 11am–2pm, Sat | F9 3206 07:00 |
| 3. DEN → HOUDenver to Houston | Southwest Airlines | 74.6% | 75.0% | 0.56% | 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 40 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am546 flights94.5%
- 8am–11am358 flights86.6%
- 11am–2pm409 flights77.9%
- 2pm–5pm277 flights70.3%
- 5pm–8pm467 flights56.2%
- 8pm–5am284 flights54.1%
Scale runs 45% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 54.1% on time, against 94.5% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 546 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DEN to HOU 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 HOU, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 94.5% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 54.1%, a wide gap of 40.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am94.5%
- 8–11am86.6%
- 11am–2pm77.9%
- 2–5pm70.3%
- 5–8pm56.2%
- 8pm–5am54.1%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 100%.
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.
June is the worst month at 58.4% on time, 28 points below January, the best at 86.2%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 226 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 70.7%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 32,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 32,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 52 to one. The split is drawn from 32,245 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 12,000 of the 32,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.56%, 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
7.4% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 883 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 77.4% on time across 2,369 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.
The sample behind these figures is 2,341 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 HOU 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. January runs 86.2% on time and June 58.4%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 2,326 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to HOU questions
How often is DEN to HOU 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 25.0% of the 2,341 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DEN to HOU compared with the rest of the country?
75.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 2 points against it. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DEN to HOU?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 54.1%, 40 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 HOU?
June is the weakest month at 58.4% on time, compared with 86.2% in January. 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
- HOU to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.6%
- DAL to HOU, a related route74.8%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record75.0%
- 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 HOU and HOU 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.