Route reliability record
DEN→RSW
Denver to Fort Myers
- Flights
- 1,132
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,607 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 2 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 1,132 DEN to RSW flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly DEN to RSW: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 84.6%, against 79.8% 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
79.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,127 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.18%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
85.3% on time across 759 flights
These figures cover 1,132 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 RSW
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 759 | 85.3% | 56 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 58 | 77.2% | 58 min | 1.72% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 315 | 66.8% | 62 min | 0.32% | 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 10 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–11am439 flights85.3%
- 11am–2pm185 flights75.7%
- 2pm–5pm397 flights75.3%
- 5pm–8pm86 flights80.2%
- 8pm–5am25 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 85.3% of the time, against 75.3% for the afternoon window. That is 10 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 439 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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 67.7% on time, 21 points below August, the best at 88.6%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 154 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.6%. 14 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 13,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 28%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
37% 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 20 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 13,337 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 85.3% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.18%, 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
5.9% 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 1,607 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg runs 81.8% on time across 1,133 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,132 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 RSW 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. August runs 88.6% on time and July 67.7%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,127 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to RSW questions
How often is DEN to RSW 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 20.2% of the 1,132 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DEN to RSW compared with the rest of the country?
79.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 2 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 RSW?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 85.3% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 75.3%, 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 RSW?
July is the weakest month at 67.7% on time, compared with 88.6% in August. Across the year that is 21 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
- RSW to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Southwest Florida International (RSW) delay statistics
- United Airlines on DEN to RSW85.3%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to RSW66.8%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- ORD to RSW, a related route76.1%
- DEN to SLC, a related route77.5%
- United Airlines on-time record85.3%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record77.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record66.8%
- 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 RSW and RSW 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.