Route reliability record
MAF→DEN
Midland to Denver
- Flights
- 1,463
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 563 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,463 MAF to DEN flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly MAF to DEN: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Sunday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.2% of the time and Sunday flights 86.4%, against 81.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 41 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,439 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.09%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
78.7% on time across 1,198 flights
These figures cover 1,463 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MAF 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 Airlinesthin sample | 265 | 95.4% | 66 min | 0.75% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,198 | 78.7% | 89 min | 1.17% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on MAF 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.
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 31 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am433 flights93.2%
- 8am–11am180 flights81.6%
- 11am–2pm314 flights82.6%
- 2pm–5pm210 flights86.5%
- 5pm–8pm326 flights62.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.2% on time, against 93.2% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 433 flights scheduled in it.
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 67.2% on time, 20 points below February, the best at 87.5%. 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 143 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 86.4% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 77.9%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 47% of the 23,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 47%Carrier
- 26%National Airspace System
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 47%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 11,000 of the 23,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 23,126 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.09% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.55%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.8% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 563 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.2% on time across 1,462 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,463 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. February runs 87.5% on time and August 67.2%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,439 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MAF to DEN questions
How often is MAF to DEN delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.3% of the 1,463 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is MAF to DEN compared with the rest of the country?
81.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 4 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MAF to DEN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 62.2%, 31 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 MAF to DEN?
August is the weakest month at 67.2% on time, compared with 87.5% in February. 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 MAF — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on MAF to DEN95.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on MAF to DEN78.7%
- MAF to DFW, a related route82.7%
- PHX to DEN, a related route77.2%
- MAF to HOU, a related route85.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record95.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record78.7%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. MAF to DEN and DEN to MAF 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.