Route reliability record
SAF→DEN
Santa Fe to Denver
- Flights
- 1,621
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 303 mi
- Carriers
- 1
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 1,621 SAF to DEN flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly SAF to DEN: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.9% of the time and Saturday flights 83.6%, against 78.5% 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
78.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,597 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.05%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
78.5% on time across 1,621 flights
These figures cover 1,621 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% 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 SAF 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,621 | 78.5% | 87 min | 1.05% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on SAF 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Santa Fe 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 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ABQ → DENAlbuquerque to Denver | SkyWest Airlines | 84.9% | 85.6% | 0.78% | 8am–11am, Sat | OO 5834 11:00 |
| 2. ABQ → DENAlbuquerque to Denver | United Airlines | 82.8% | 83.5% | 0.86% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 621 07:00 |
| 3. ABQ → DENAlbuquerque to Denver | Southwest Airlines | 78.6% | 79.1% | 0.62% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 4. SAF → DENSanta Fe to Denver | SkyWest Airlines | 77.7% | 78.5% | 1.05% | 5am–8am, Sat | OO 5878 13:23 |
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 17 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–8am364 flights83.9%
- 8am–11am316 flights83.1%
- 11am–2pm384 flights77.6%
- 2pm–5pm218 flights83.0%
- 5pm–8pm339 flights66.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 83.9% of the time, against 66.7% for the evening window. That is 17 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 384 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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 65.0% on time, 24 points below November, the best at 89.2%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 155 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 83.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 73.2%. 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. Carrier accounts for 47% of the 30,000 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
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 14,000 of the 30,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 29,754 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.05% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.43%.
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. 9.3% 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 303 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.7% on time across 1,621 flights, 3 points above 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,621 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 89.2% on time and July 65.0%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,597 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SAF to DEN questions
How often is SAF 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 21.5% of the 1,621 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is SAF to DEN compared with the rest of the country?
78.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about a point in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SAF to DEN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 83.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 66.7%, 17 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 SAF to DEN?
July is the weakest month at 65.0% on time, compared with 89.2% in November. Across the year that is 24 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 SAF — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- SAF to DFW, a related route78.8%
- PHX to DEN, a related route77.2%
- SLC to DEN, a related route77.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record78.5%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. SAF to DEN and DEN to SAF are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed SAF to DEN’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.