Route reliability record
FAT→DEN
Fresno to Denver
- Flights
- 1,449
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 844 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 11 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,449 FAT to DEN flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly FAT to DEN: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 90.8%, against 88.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 114 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,444 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.07%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
91.1% on time across 746 flights
These figures cover 1,449 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 FAT to DEN
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 Airlinesthin sample | 344 | 91.5% | 95 min | 0.29% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 746 | 91.1% | 87 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 359 | 81.0% | 54 min | 0.00% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on FAT 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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Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 1,449 flights.
- 5am–8am373 flights91.9%
- 8am–11am385 flights91.7%
- 11am–2pm665 flights86.4%
- 2pm–5pm26 flights—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 80% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 86.4% on time against 91.9% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 665 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter FAT 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 FAT to DEN, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 91.9% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 86.4%, a real gap of 5.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am91.9%
- 8–11am91.7%
- 11am–2pm86.4%
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm—
- 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 13 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 80.2% on time, 13 points below October, the best at 93.5%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 125 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 84.5%, a spread of 6 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 48% of the 12,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%Carrier
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 5,794 of the 12,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 12,135 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.07%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.6% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 844 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 80.3% on time across 1,452 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,449 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. October runs 93.5% on time and July 80.2%, a swing of 13 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,444 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FAT to DEN questions
How often is FAT to DEN delayed?
About one flight in nine arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 11.3% of the 1,449 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is FAT to DEN compared with the rest of the country?
88.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 11 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on FAT to DEN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.9% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 86.4%, 6 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 FAT to DEN?
July is the weakest month at 80.2% on time, compared with 93.5% in October. Across the year that is 13 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 FAT — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- United Airlines on FAT to DEN91.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on FAT to DEN91.1%
- Southwest Airlines on FAT to DEN81.0%
- FAT to SAN, a related route73.2%
- PHX to DEN, a related route76.7%
- FAT to LAS, a related route81.6%
- United Airlines on-time record91.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record91.1%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record81.0%
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. FAT to DEN and DEN to FAT 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.