Route reliability record
DEN→RIC
Denver to Richmond
- Flights
- 756
- Period
- July 2025 to June 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, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 756 DEN to RIC flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.
Best time to fly DEN to RIC: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Sunday. Flights in that window arrived on time 77.6% of the time and Sunday flights 76.6%, against 69.2% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 84 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 746 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.79%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
72.4% on time across 395 flights
These figures cover 756 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
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 | 64 | 90.6% | 57 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 395 | 72.4% | 68 min | 0.76% | C+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 297 | 60.0% | 47 min | 1.01% | D |
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 23 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–11am109 flights77.6%
- 11am–2pm194 flights66.7%
- 2pm–5pm49 flights54.3%
- 5pm–8pm404 flights69.8%
- 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 77.6% of the time, against 54.3% for the afternoon window. That is 23 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 404 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 55 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 31.1% on time, 55 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. June was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 76.6% on time and Saturday the weakest at 62.4%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 13,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
51% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 41 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 13,072 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 77.6% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.79%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
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. 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 73.6% on time across 756 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 756 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. 756 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 69.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 746 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 three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 30.8% of the 756 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DEN to RIC compared with the rest of the country?
69.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 8 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 77.6% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 54.3%, 23 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 31.1% on time, compared with 86.5% in February. Across the year that is 55 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 RIC72.4%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to RIC60.0%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- ATL to RIC, a related route81.2%
- DEN to SLC, a related route77.5%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record90.6%
- United Airlines on-time record72.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record60.0%
- 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 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.