Route reliability record
MTJ→DEN
Montrose to Denver
- Flights
- 1,416
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 197 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About 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 1,416 MTJ to DEN flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 420 at 80.7% on time.
Best time to fly MTJ to DEN: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.9% of the time and Thursday flights 82.6%, against 78.9% 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
78.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,405 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.56%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
80.7% on time across 420 flights
These figures cover 1,416 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.2% 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 MTJ to DEN
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 420 | 80.7% | 80 min | 0.24% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 886 | 78.5% | 93 min | 0.68% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 110 | 75.7% | 68 min | 0.91% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 80.7%, 2 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 Montrose 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. 3 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. GJT → DENGrand Junction to Denver | United Airlines | 81.3% | 81.6% | 0.41% | 5am–8am, Sun | UA 1877 07:00 |
| 2. MTJ → DENMontrose to Denver | Southwest Airlines | 80.5% | 80.7% | 0.24% | 8am–11am, Thu | — |
| 3. GUC → DENGunnison to Denver | SkyWest Airlines | 79.9% | 80.6% | 0.90% | 11am–2pm, Sun | OO 5602 07:00 |
| 4. MTJ → DENMontrose to Denver | United Airlines | 78.0% | 78.5% | 0.68% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 5. GJT → DENGrand Junction to Denver | SkyWest Airlines | 74.0% | 75.5% | 2.01% | 5am–8am, Wed | OO 4800 05:30 |
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 24 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am365 flights85.4%
- 8am–11am123 flights86.9%
- 11am–2pm566 flights82.7%
- 2pm–5pm354 flights63.4%
- 5pm–8pm8 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 86.9% of the time, against 63.4% for the afternoon window. That is 24 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 566 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 37 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 59.8% on time, 37 points below November, the best at 96.6%. 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 151 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 82.6% on time and Saturday the weakest at 75.9%. 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 26,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
40% 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 26,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 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 25,807 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 9,125 minutes out of 26,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.56%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 197 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.2% on time across 1,417 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,416 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 96.6% on time and July 59.8%, a swing of 37 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,405 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MTJ to DEN questions
How often is MTJ to DEN delayed?
About 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 21.1% of the 1,416 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MTJ to DEN?
Southwest Airlines leads at 80.7% on time across 420 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 78.5%, a gap of 2 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 MTJ to DEN?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 86.9% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 63.4%, 24 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 MTJ to DEN?
July is the weakest month at 59.8% on time, compared with 96.6% in November. Across the year that is 37 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 MTJ — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on MTJ to DEN80.7%
- United Airlines on MTJ to DEN78.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on MTJ to DEN75.7%
- PHX to DEN, a related route77.2%
- SLC to DEN, a related route77.8%
- LAX to DEN, a related route81.7%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record80.7%
- United Airlines on-time record78.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record75.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. MTJ to DEN and DEN to MTJ 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.