Route reliability record
DEN→RNO
Denver to Reno
- Flights
- 2,439
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 804 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,439 DEN to RNO flights, of which United Airlines flew 1,292 at 77.2% on time.
Best time to fly DEN to RNO: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 78.1%, against 74.5% 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
74.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,426 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.33%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
77.2% on time across 1,292 flights
These figures cover 2,439 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% 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 RNO
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 77.2% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 70.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,080 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 26 | 96.2% | 596 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 41 | 82.9% | 69 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 1,292 | 77.2% | 66 min | 0.15% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,080 | 70.4% | 53 min | 0.56% | C+ |
United leads Southwest by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on DEN to RNO
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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Denver to Reno
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DEN → RNODenver to Reno | United Airlines | 77.1% | 77.2% | 0.15% | 8am–11am, Tue | UA 2167 11:15 |
| 2. DEN → RNODenver to Reno | Southwest Airlines | 70.0% | 70.4% | 0.56% | 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 31 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am72 flights81.9%
- 8am–11am397 flights90.9%
- 11am–2pm429 flights84.8%
- 2pm–5pm629 flights73.8%
- 5pm–8pm430 flights65.3%
- 8pm–5am482 flights59.7%
Scale runs 50% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 59.7% on time, against 90.9% for the 8am–11am 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 629 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DEN to RNO 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 RNO, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 90.9% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 59.7%, a wide gap of 31.2 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am81.9%
- 8–11am90.9%
- 11am–2pm84.8%
- 2–5pm73.8%
- 5–8pm65.3%
- 8pm–5am59.7%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
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 59.5% on time, 28 points below November, the best at 87.5%. 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. September was the busiest month here, with 248 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 69.9%, a spread of 8 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 58% of the 37,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
58% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 37,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 50 to one. The split is drawn from 37,112 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 90.9% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.33%, 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
8.2% 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 804 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 86.6% on time across 2,438 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,439 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 RNO 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 87.5% on time and June 59.5%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 2,426 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to RNO questions
How often is DEN to RNO 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 25.5% of the 2,439 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to RNO?
United Airlines leads at 77.2% on time across 1,292 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 70.4%, a gap of 7 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DEN to RNO?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 90.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 59.7%, 31 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 RNO?
June is the weakest month at 59.5% on time, compared with 87.5% in November. 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
- RNO to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- United Airlines on DEN to RNO77.2%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to RNO70.4%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.6%
- LAS to RNO, a related route78.9%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record96.2%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record82.9%
- United Airlines on-time record77.2%
- 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 RNO and RNO 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.