Route reliability record
RNO→DEN
Reno to Denver
- Flights
- 2,438
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 804 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 2,438 RNO to DEN flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 1,081 at 87.2% on time.
Best time to fly RNO to DEN: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.6% of the time and Saturday flights 91.2%, against 86.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 93 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,415 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.33%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
87.2% on time across 1,081 flights
These figures cover 2,438 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on RNO to DEN
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 25 | 96.0% | 23 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,081 | 87.2% | 61 min | 0.28% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 1,291 | 86.1% | 80 min | 0.39% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 41 | 80.5% | 165 min | 0.00% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 87.2%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on RNO 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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Reno 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. RNO → DENReno to Denver | Southwest Airlines | 87.0% | 87.2% | 0.28% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. RNO → DENReno to Denver | United Airlines | 85.8% | 86.1% | 0.39% | 5am–8am, Sat | UA 347 09:10 |
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 25 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am728 flights93.6%
- 8am–11am716 flights90.0%
- 11am–2pm577 flights83.4%
- 2pm–5pm275 flights68.4%
- 5pm–8pm142 flights80.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.6% of the time, against 68.4% for the afternoon window. That is 25 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 728 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter RNO 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 RNO to DEN, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.6% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 68.4%, a wide gap of 25.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.6%
- 8–11am90.0%
- 11am–2pm83.4%
- 2–5pm68.4%
- 5–8pm80.9%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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 76.0% on time, 20 points below January, the best at 95.8%. 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. September was the busiest month here, with 248 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 91.2% on time and Thursday the weakest at 82.9%, a spread of 8 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 24,000 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 26%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
34% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 23,779 reported delay minutes.
34% 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 8,037 minutes out of 24,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.33%, 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
5.0% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 804 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 74.5% on time across 2,439 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,438 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 95.8% on time and August 76.0%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 2,415 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RNO to DEN questions
How often is RNO to DEN delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 13.4% of the 2,438 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on RNO to DEN?
Southwest Airlines leads at 87.2% on time across 1,081 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 86.1%, a gap of about a point. 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 RNO to DEN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.6% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 68.4%, 25 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 RNO to DEN?
August is the weakest month at 76.0% on time, compared with 95.8% in January. 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 RNO — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on RNO to DEN87.2%
- United Airlines on RNO to DEN86.1%
- RNO to LAS, a related route81.4%
- PHX to DEN, a related route76.7%
- RNO to LAX, a related route87.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record96.0%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record87.2%
- United Airlines on-time record86.1%
- 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. RNO to DEN and DEN to RNO 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.