Route reliability record
RSW→DEN
Fort Myers to Denver
- Flights
- 1,133
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,607 mi
- Carriers
- 3
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 a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,133 RSW to DEN flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly RSW to DEN: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Monday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.4% of the time and Monday flights 87.0%, against 81.8% 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 42 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,126 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.35%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
85.8% on time across 760 flights
These figures cover 1,133 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 RSW 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 760 | 85.8% | 74 min | 0.26% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 315 | 73.9% | 60 min | 0.32% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 58 | 71.9% | 98 min | 1.72% | C |
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 33 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–8am67 flights95.5%
- 8am–11am303 flights96.4%
- 11am–2pm229 flights80.3%
- 2pm–5pm434 flights73.5%
- 5pm–8pm74 flights63.0%
- 8pm–5am26 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.0% on time, against 96.4% for the 8am–11am 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 434 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 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 62.9% on time, 29 points below May, the best at 91.4%. 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 155 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 87.0% on time and Saturday the weakest at 77.4%. 10 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 42% of the 14,000 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.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
42% 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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 14,365 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 96.4% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.35%, 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
6.4% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,607 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg runs 79.8% on time across 1,132 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 1,133 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. May runs 91.4% on time and July 62.9%, a swing of 29 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,126 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RSW to DEN questions
How often is RSW 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 18.2% of the 1,133 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is RSW to DEN compared with the rest of the country?
81.8% 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 RSW to DEN?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 96.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 63.0%, 33 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 RSW to DEN?
July is the weakest month at 62.9% on time, compared with 91.4% in May. Across the year that is 29 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 RSW — the return legseparate record
- Southwest Florida International (RSW) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- United Airlines on RSW to DEN85.8%
- Southwest Airlines on RSW to DEN73.9%
- RSW to ORD, a related route76.5%
- PHX to DEN, a related route77.2%
- RSW to ATL, a related route85.7%
- United Airlines on-time record85.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record73.9%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record71.9%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. RSW to DEN and DEN to RSW 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.