Route reliability record
DEN→SAF
Denver to Santa Fe
- Flights
- 1,621
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 303 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,621 DEN to SAF flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly DEN to SAF: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.8% of the time and Saturday flights 88.1%, against 81.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 41 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,600 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.11%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
81.7% on time across 1,621 flights
These figures cover 1,621 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 SAF
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 | 1,621 | 81.7% | 75 min | 1.11% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on DEN to SAF
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 Santa Fe
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. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DEN → ABQDenver to Albuquerque | SkyWest Airlines | 82.8% | 83.5% | 0.78% | 8am–11am, Tue | OO 5487 08:10 |
| 2. DEN → SAFDenver to Santa Fe | SkyWest Airlines | 80.8% | 81.7% | 1.11% | 8am–11am, Sat | OO 4731 08:05 |
| 3. DEN → ABQDenver to Albuquerque | United Airlines | 76.4% | 76.7% | 0.37% | 11am–2pm, Tue | UA 484 20:37 |
| 4. DEN → ABQDenver to Albuquerque | Southwest Airlines | 73.8% | 74.1% | 0.41% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
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 13 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–8am60 flights83.1%
- 8am–11am275 flights90.8%
- 11am–2pm564 flights80.4%
- 2pm–5pm358 flights79.8%
- 5pm–8pm150 flights78.1%
- 8pm–5am214 flights78.5%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.8% of the time, against 78.1% for the evening window. That is 13 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 564 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 68.6% on time, 21 points below October, the best at 89.3%. 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 155 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 88.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 76.8%. 11 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. Carrier accounts for 46% of the 22,000 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.
- 46%Carrier
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 11% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 21,877 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 10,000 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.11% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.19%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.5% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 303 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.5% on time across 1,621 flights, 3 points below 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,621 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 SAF 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. October runs 89.3% on time and July 68.6%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,600 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to SAF questions
How often is DEN to SAF delayed?
Roughly 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 18.3% of the 1,621 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is DEN to SAF compared with the rest of the country?
81.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 4 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 SAF?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 90.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 78.1%, 13 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 SAF?
July is the weakest month at 68.6% on time, compared with 89.3% in October. 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
- SAF to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- DFW to SAF, a related route76.7%
- DEN to SLC, a related route77.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record81.7%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. DEN to SAF and SAF 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.