Route reliability record
TPA→DEN
Tampa to Denver
- Flights
- 3,099
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,506 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 3,099 flights, of which United Airlines flew 1,186 at 84.5% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 84.5% on time across 1,186 flights.
Key figures
On time
81.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,073 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.39%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
84.5% on time across 1,186 flights
These figures cover 3,099 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 TPA to DEN
The three carriers here are closely matched: 6 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 1,186 | 84.5% | 67 min | 0.34% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 604 | 79.3% | 85 min | 0.83% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,309 | 79.0% | 49 min | 0.23% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 84.5%, 6 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 29 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am518 flights91.4%
- 8am–11am791 flights88.7%
- 11am–2pm596 flights87.8%
- 2pm–5pm589 flights70.6%
- 5pm–8pm351 flights62.9%
- 8pm–5am254 flights70.6%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.9% on time, against 91.4% for the 5am–8am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 791 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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 68.0% on time, 18 points below September, the best at 86.3%. 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 334 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 79.0%. 9 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 36,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 28%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
39% 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 36,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 36,120 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 91.4% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.39%, 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
6.1% 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 are the about an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,506 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.6% on time across 3,098 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,099 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.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 86.3% on time and August 68.0%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 3,073 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TPA to DEN questions
How often is TPA to DEN delayed?
About one flight in five arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.8% of the 3,099 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on TPA to DEN?
United Airlines leads at 84.5% on time across 1,186 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 79.0%, a gap of 6 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 TPA to DEN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 62.9%, 29 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 TPA to DEN?
August is the weakest month at 68.0% on time, compared with 86.3% in September. Across the year that is 18 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 TPA — the return legseparate record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- United Airlines on-time record84.5%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record79.3%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record79.0%
- 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. TPA to DEN and DEN to TPA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.