Route reliability record
HDN→DEN
Hayden to Denver
- Flights
- 1,426
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 141 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four 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 1,426 HDN to DEN flights, of which United Airlines flew 731 at 79.4% on time.
Best time to fly HDN to DEN: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 82.8% of the time and Wednesday flights 79.5%, against 77.4% 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
77.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,416 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.63%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
79.4% on time across 731 flights
These figures cover 1,426 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on HDN to DEN
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 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 | 731 | 79.4% | 78 min | 0.96% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 430 | 76.5% | 67 min | 0.23% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 265 | 73.4% | 62 min | 0.38% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 79.4%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Hayden 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. HDN → DENHayden to Denver | United Airlines | 78.6% | 79.4% | 0.96% | 11am–2pm, Tue | — |
| 2. HDN → DENHayden to Denver | Southwest Airlines | 76.3% | 76.5% | 0.23% | 11am–2pm, Thu | — |
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 17 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am365 flights80.9%
- 8am–11am123 flights72.4%
- 11am–2pm608 flights82.8%
- 2pm–5pm318 flights66.2%
- 5pm–8pm12 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 82.8% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 66.2%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 608 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 30 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 61.2% on time, 30 points below November, the best at 91.0%. 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 156 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 79.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 72.2%. 7 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 23,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
39% 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 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 22,715 reported delay minutes.
35% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 7,859 minutes out of 23,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.63%, 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
8.5% 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 141 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.1% on time across 1,427 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 1,426 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. November runs 91.0% on time and July 61.2%, a swing of 30 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,416 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
HDN to DEN questions
How often is HDN to DEN delayed?
Roughly 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 22.6% of the 1,426 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on HDN to DEN?
United Airlines leads at 79.4% on time across 731 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 76.5%, a gap of 3 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 HDN to DEN?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 82.8% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 66.2%, 17 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 HDN to DEN?
July is the weakest month at 61.2% on time, compared with 91.0% in November. Across the year that is 30 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 HDN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- United Airlines on HDN to DEN79.4%
- Southwest Airlines on HDN to DEN76.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on HDN to DEN73.4%
- PHX to DEN, a related route77.2%
- SLC to DEN, a related route77.8%
- LAX to DEN, a related route81.7%
- United Airlines on-time record79.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record76.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record73.4%
- 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. HDN to DEN and DEN to HDN are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed HDN to DEN’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.