Route reliability record
DEN→IDA
Denver to Idaho Falls
- Flights
- 1,737
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 458 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five 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 1,737 DEN to IDA flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly DEN to IDA: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Sunday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.0% of the time and Sunday flights 82.6%, against 80.3% 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
80.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,720 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.63%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
80.4% on time across 1,535 flights
These figures cover 1,737 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to IDA
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 Airlines | 1,535 | 80.4% | 67 min | 0.72% | B+ |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 184 | 79.8% | 62 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Allegiant Airthin sample | 18 | 72.2% | 37 min | 0.00% | C+ |
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 16 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–8am—
- 8am–11am361 flights88.0%
- 11am–2pm550 flights83.6%
- 2pm–5pm322 flights78.4%
- 5pm–8pm363 flights72.4%
- 8pm–5am141 flights71.9%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 88.0% of the time, against 71.9% for the overnight window. That is 16 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 550 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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 66.7% on time, 23 points below November, the best at 90.1%. 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 192 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 82.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 76.6%. 6 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 23,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Carrier
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 8,789 of the 23,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 22,500 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 88.0% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.63%, 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
7.3% 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 an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 458 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 runs 79.2% on time across 1,738 flights, within about 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 1,737 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 IDA 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 90.1% on time and July 66.7%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,720 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to IDA questions
How often is DEN to IDA delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.7% of the 1,737 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DEN to IDA compared with the rest of the country?
80.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 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 IDA?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 88.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 71.9%, 16 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 IDA?
July is the weakest month at 66.7% on time, compared with 90.1% in November. Across the year that is 23 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
- IDA to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to IDA80.4%
- United Airlines on DEN to IDA79.8%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- SLC to IDA, a related route89.3%
- DEN to SLC, a related route77.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record80.4%
- United Airlines on-time record79.8%
- Allegiant Air on-time record72.2%
- 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 IDA and IDA 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.