Route reliability record
DRO→DEN
Durango to Denver
- Flights
- 2,201
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 251 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 2,201 DRO to DEN flights, of which United Airlines flew 730 at 85.5% on time.
Best time to fly DRO to DEN: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.6% of the time and Thursday flights 84.3%, against 82.5% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 52 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,174 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.09%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
85.5% on time across 730 flights
These figures cover 2,201 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DRO to DEN
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 730 | 85.5% | 72 min | 0.41% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,471 | 80.9% | 95 min | 1.43% | B |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 85.5%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on DRO to DEN
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 Durango to Denver
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. DRO → DENDurango to Denver | United Airlines | 85.1% | 85.5% | 0.41% | 5am–8am, Thu | UA 687 07:00 |
| 2. DRO → DENDurango to Denver | SkyWest Airlines | 79.7% | 80.9% | 1.43% | 5am–8am, Tue | OO 5638 11:00 |
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 19 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am571 flights89.8%
- 8am–11am256 flights90.6%
- 11am–2pm646 flights84.2%
- 2pm–5pm363 flights72.1%
- 5pm–8pm363 flights72.3%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.6% of the time, against 72.1% for the afternoon window. That is 19 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 646 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DRO to DEN 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 DRO to DEN, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 90.6% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 72.1%, a wide gap of 18.5 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am89.8%
- 8–11am90.6%
- 11am–2pm84.2%
- 2–5pm72.1%
- 5–8pm72.3%
- 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 20 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.
August is the worst month at 69.4% on time, 20 points below April, the best at 89.2%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 205 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 84.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 77.3%, a spread of 7 points.
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 34,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 13%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 13% 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 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 33,901 reported delay minutes.
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 34,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations sit at 1.09% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.14%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 251 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 runs 80.2% on time across 2,201 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 2,201 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 DEN 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. April runs 89.2% on time and August 69.4%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 2,174 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DRO to DEN questions
How often is DRO to DEN delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.5% of the 2,201 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DRO to DEN?
United Airlines leads at 85.5% on time across 730 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 80.9%, a gap of 5 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 DRO to DEN?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 90.6% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 72.1%, 19 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 August delays on DRO to DEN?
August is the weakest month at 69.4% on time, compared with 89.2% in April. Across the year that is 20 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
- DEN to DRO — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- United Airlines on DRO to DEN85.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on DRO to DEN80.9%
- DRO to DFW, a related route81.3%
- PHX to DEN, a related route76.7%
- DRO to PHX, a related route76.7%
- United Airlines on-time record85.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record80.9%
- 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. DRO to DEN and DEN to DRO 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.