Route reliability record
HOU→DEN
Houston to Denver
- Flights
- 2,369
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 883 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average. That rests on 2,369 HOU to DEN flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly HOU to DEN: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 82.3%, against 77.4% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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 2,356 completed flights
Avg delay
53 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.34%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
77.4% on time across 2,369 flights
These figures cover 2,369 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 HOU 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 2,369 | 77.4% | 53 min | 0.34% | B+ |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Houston to Denver
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. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. IAH → DENHouston to Denver | United Airlines | 83.4% | 83.6% | 0.23% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 1654 18:19 |
| 2. IAH → DENHouston to Denver | Frontier Airlines | 79.2% | 80.2% | 1.20% | 8am–11am, Wed | F9 3229 06:45 |
| 3. HOU → DENHouston to Denver | Southwest Airlines | 77.1% | 77.4% | 0.34% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 37 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am419 flights95.7%
- 8am–11am503 flights84.4%
- 11am–2pm334 flights74.1%
- 2pm–5pm331 flights70.0%
- 5pm–8pm389 flights59.1%
- 8pm–5am393 flights76.2%
Scale runs 50% to 100%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.1% on time, against 95.7% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 503 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter HOU 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 HOU to DEN, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 95.7% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 59.1%, a wide gap of 36.6 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am95.7%
- 8–11am84.4%
- 11am–2pm74.1%
- 2–5pm70.0%
- 5–8pm59.1%
- 8pm–5am76.2%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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.
June is the worst month at 63.7% on time, 26 points below January, the best at 89.8%. 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 234 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.3% on time and Saturday the weakest at 73.7%, a spread of 9 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 28,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%National Airspace System
- 26%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 28,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 to one. The split is drawn from 28,194 reported delay minutes.
33% 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 9,324 minutes out of 28,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.34%, 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
6.3% 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 roughly 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 883 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 runs 75.0% on time across 2,341 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 2,369 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. January runs 89.8% on time and June 63.7%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 2,356 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
HOU to DEN questions
How often is HOU 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 2,369 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average.
How reliable is HOU to DEN compared with the rest of the country?
77.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of half a point in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on HOU to DEN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 59.1%, 37 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 June delays on HOU to DEN?
June is the weakest month at 63.7% on time, compared with 89.8% in January. Across the year that is 26 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 HOU — the return legseparate record
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- HOU to DAL, a related route81.6%
- PHX to DEN, a related route76.7%
- HOU to ATL, a related route79.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record77.4%
- 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. HOU to DEN and DEN to HOU 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.