Route reliability record
SBP→DEN
San Luis Obispo to Denver
- Flights
- 724
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 931 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That rests on 724 SBP to DEN flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 49 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 712 completed flights
Avg delay
115 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.41%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
83.3% on time across 465 flights
These figures cover 724 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SBP 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 | 465 | 83.3% | 122 min | 0.65% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 259 | 80.2% | 104 min | 0.00% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on SBP 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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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 11 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am362 flights87.7%
- 8am–11am1 flights—
- 11am–2pm361 flights76.6%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 76.6% on time against 87.7% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 362 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SBP 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 SBP to DEN, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 87.7% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 76.6%, a wide gap of 11.1 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am87.7%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm76.6%
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 14 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.
December is the weak month at 73.8% on time, against 87.5% in February. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.4%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 42% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 14,573 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 87.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.41%, 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
8.8% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 931 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 78.5% on time across 724 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 724 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DEN after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 724 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 82.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 712 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SBP to DEN questions
How often is SBP to DEN delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.8% of the 724 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is SBP to DEN compared with the rest of the country?
82.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 5 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SBP to DEN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.7% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 76.6%, 11 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 December delays on SBP to DEN?
December is the weakest month at 73.8% on time, compared with 87.5% in February. Across the year that is 14 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 SBP — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- United Airlines on SBP to DEN83.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on SBP to DEN80.2%
- SBP to PHX, a related route81.7%
- PHX to DEN, a related route76.7%
- SBP to SFO, a related route56.4%
- United Airlines on-time record83.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record80.2%
- 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. SBP to DEN and DEN to SBP 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.