Route reliability record
DEN→RIC
Denver to Richmond
- Flights
- 818
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,481 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, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land roughly 55 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 818 DEN to RIC flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
Best time to fly DEN to RIC: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Sunday. Flights in that window arrived on time 76.9% of the time and Sunday flights 82.0%, against 71.7% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 56 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 809 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.73%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
73.9% on time across 439 flights
These figures cover 818 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.3% 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 RIC
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 89 | 88.8% | 55 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 439 | 73.9% | 67 min | 0.68% | C+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 290 | 63.0% | 39 min | 1.03% | D |
Flight by flight
Flights on DEN to RIC
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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 818 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am149 flights76.9%
- 11am–2pm262 flights67.3%
- 2pm–5pm30 flights—
- 5pm–8pm377 flights73.3%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 67.3% on time against 76.9% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 377 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DEN to RIC 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 RIC, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 76.9% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 67.3%, a real gap of 9.6 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am76.9%
- 11am–2pm67.3%
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm73.3%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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 61.9% on time, 25 points below February, the best at 86.5%. 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 97 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 82.0% on time and Saturday the weakest at 59.4%, a spread of 23 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 12,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
51% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 27 to one. The split is drawn from 12,242 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 76.9% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.73%, 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
8.3% 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 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,481 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 69.5% on time across 818 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 818 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 RIC after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 818 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 71.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 809 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to RIC questions
How often is DEN to RIC delayed?
Roughly 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 28.3% of the 818 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average.
How reliable is DEN to RIC compared with the rest of the country?
71.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 6 points against it. That is worth a C+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DEN to RIC?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 76.9% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 67.3%, 10 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 RIC?
July is the weakest month at 61.9% on time, compared with 86.5% 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
- RIC to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- United Airlines on DEN to RIC73.9%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to RIC63.0%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.6%
- ATL to RIC, a related route81.6%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record88.8%
- United Airlines on-time record73.9%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record63.0%
- 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 RIC and RIC 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.