Route reliability record
DEN→MRY
Denver to Monterey
- Flights
- 727
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 959 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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 727 DEN to MRY flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
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
80.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 722 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.41%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
82.4% on time across 685 flights
These figures cover 727 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 MRY
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 | 685 | 82.4% | 61 min | 0.29% | B+ |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 42 | 51.2% | 48 min | 2.38% | F |
Flight by flight
Flights on DEN to MRY
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 Monterey
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 → MRYDenver to Monterey | SkyWest Airlines | 82.2% | 82.4% | 0.29% | 11am–2pm, Tue (route) | OO 5438 11:15 |
| 2. DEN → SJCDenver to San Jose | United Airlines | 80.5% | 80.5% | 0.00% | 8am–11am, Thu | — |
| 3. DEN → SJCDenver to San Jose | Southwest Airlines | 68.9% | 69.4% | 0.65% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
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 12 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–11am—
- 11am–2pm363 flights86.5%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm364 flights74.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 86.5% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 74.7%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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 63.9% on time, 25 points below February, the best at 89.1%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 76.7%. 8 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 8,299 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
36% 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 8,299 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 8,299 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.41%, 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
6.6% 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.
The 959 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 93.1% on time across 729 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 727 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in MRY after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 727 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 80.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 722 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to MRY questions
How often is DEN to MRY 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 19.4% of the 727 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DEN to MRY compared with the rest of the country?
80.6% 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 MRY?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 86.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 74.7%, 12 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 MRY?
July is the weakest month at 63.9% on time, compared with 89.1% in February. Across the year that is 25 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
- MRY to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- PHX to MRY, a related route78.9%
- DEN to SLC, a related route77.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record82.4%
- United Airlines on-time record51.2%
- 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 MRY and MRY 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.