Route reliability record
LGB→DEN
Long Beach to Denver
- Flights
- 1,007
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 854 mi
- Carriers
- 1
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 about an hour on average. That rests on 1,007 LGB to DEN flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly LGB to DEN: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.5% of the time and Wednesday flights 85.1%, against 82.0% 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 47 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,000 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.10%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
82.0% on time across 1,007 flights
These figures cover 1,007 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 LGB 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 | 1,007 | 82.0% | 61 min | 0.10% | B+ |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Long Beach 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. 5 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. LAX → DENLos Angeles to Denver | United Airlines | 87.7% | 87.7% | 0.00% | 5am–8am, Sun | UA 1912 08:47 |
| 2. BUR → DENBurbank to Denver | United Airlines | 87.3% | 87.5% | 0.24% | 8am–11am, Sat | UA 1191 09:00 |
| 3. ONT → DENOntario to Denver | United Airlines | 86.8% | 87.1% | 0.38% | 5am–8am, Sun | UA 2446 05:00 |
| 4. SNA → DENSanta Ana to Denver | United Airlines | 86.7% | 86.9% | 0.26% | 8am–11am, Sat | UA 2656 18:26 |
| 5. ONT → DENOntario to Denver | Frontier Airlines | 85.9% | 86.5% | 0.72% | 5am–8am, Fri | F9 1500 06:00 |
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 27 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am281 flights92.5%
- 8am–11am291 flights90.7%
- 11am–2pm121 flights78.2%
- 2pm–5pm313 flights65.7%
- 5pm–8pm1 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.5% of the time, against 65.7% for the afternoon window. That is 27 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 313 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LGB 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 LGB to DEN, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 92.5% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 65.7%, a wide gap of 26.8 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am92.5%
- 8–11am90.7%
- 11am–2pm78.2%
- 2–5pm65.7%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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.
August is the worst month at 74.7% on time, 21 points below January, the best at 95.5%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 78.5%, 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 11,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%National Airspace System
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%Carrier
- 10%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. The split is drawn from 10,891 reported delay minutes.
41% 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 4,510 minutes out of 11,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.10%, 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
6.2% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 854 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 72.7% on time across 1,005 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,007 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DEN after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,007 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 82.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,000 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LGB to DEN questions
How often is LGB 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 18.0% of the 1,007 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is LGB to DEN compared with the rest of the country?
82.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 5 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LGB to DEN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.5% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 65.7%, 27 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 LGB to DEN?
August is the weakest month at 74.7% on time, compared with 95.5% in January. 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
- DEN to LGB — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- LGB to LAS, a related route80.4%
- PHX to DEN, a related route76.7%
- LGB to SMF, a related route86.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record82.0%
- 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. LGB to DEN and DEN to LGB 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.