Route profile
DAL→DEN
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Dallas to Denver, 651 miles.
Right now
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Route reliability
July 2023 – July 2026
Better than 34% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 9,953 flights. How this is calculated
DAL → DEN arrives on time 73.6% of the time; the return trip, DEN → DAL, arrives on time 72.5% of the time.
DAL → DEN spends 20.8 minutes on the ground on a 651-mile trip: 13.7 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at DAL and 7.1 minutes from touchdown to gate at DEN.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Why DAL → DEN flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
DAL → DEN cancelled 131 of 9,953 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 76. The reason filed most often was extreme weather, 65.6% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 116 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 131 cancelled departures carrying a reason code.
What each reason means
Conditions the carrier judged severe enough to stop the flight: a blizzard, a hurricane, a line of thunderstorms.
86 cancellations, 65.6% of the total.
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
33 cancellations, 25.2% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
12 cancellations, 9.2% of the total.
A terminal evacuation, a security breach, screening equipment failure, or screening queues over 29 minutes.
0 cancellations, 0.0% of the total.
Reason codes are the operating airline’s own filing with US DOT, not an independent finding of fault. With only one or two carriers on the route, the split mostly reflects how they file. Ordinary bad weather is filed under air traffic, so weather’s full share is larger than its bar.
131 coded cancellations were recorded on DAL → DEN; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
50 min late
against a median of 2 min early
Percentiles over 9,953 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at DEN after arriving from DAL.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 45% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 26% | High risk |
| 60 min | 16% | High risk |
| 90 min | 7.9% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 4.2% | Low risk |
This is one leg of a connection. Gate changes and the next flight's own schedule matter too. And a connection can fail before delay is even the question — this route cancels 1.32% of the time and diverts 0.29% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 9,793 arrivals on this route that landed later than the connection time less 30 minutes to reach the next gate.
The worst tenth of arrivals on this route land at least 50 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 9,953 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
DAL → DEN flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 88.2% of the time, against 61.4% for 3–6 PM departures, a gap of 26.8 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 5 AM: too few flights to score
- 6 AM: 93.9% on time from 930 flights
- 7 AM: 88.9% on time from 750 flights
- 8 AM: 80.5% on time from 756 flights
- 9 AM: 86.1% on time from 418 flights
- 10 AM: 79.3% on time from 537 flights
- 11 AM: 76.2% on time from 629 flights
- 12 PM: 80.2% on time from 628 flights
- 1 PM: 70.2% on time from 670 flights
- 2 PM: 73.5% on time from 534 flights
- 3 PM: 66.3% on time from 604 flights
- 4 PM: 61.6% on time from 479 flights
- 5 PM: 56.4% on time from 602 flights
- 6 PM: 64.1% on time from 631 flights
- 7 PM: 59.8% on time from 670 flights
- 8 PM: 63.0% on time from 421 flights
- 9 PM: 63.5% on time from 357 flights
- 10 PM: 60.7% on time from 337 flights
- 11 PM: too few flights to score
Why DAL → DEN runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
screening or terminal security incidents
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for DAL → DEN. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on DAL → DEN, at 43.7%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 88.2% of the time and 3–6 PM departures 61.4%.
Airlines on this route
Carriers with at least 200 flights, by the airline that operated each one.
| Carrier | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 9,953 | 73.6% | 1.32% | -2 min | 8.1% |
Other ways to fly Dallas–Fort Worth to Denver
Airport pairs in the same two city markets, as the DOT defines them.
| Route | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DFW→DEN Dallas–Fort Worth to Denver | 18,864 | 70.4% | 1.97% | -3 min | 45 |
| DAL→DEN this route Dallas to Denver | 9,953 | 73.6% | 1.32% | -2 min | 59 |
DAL → DEN is the most reliable pairing for this journey at 73.6% on time, against 70.4% for DFW → DEN.
Flying to DEN from the Dallas–Fort Worth area? Compare DAL, DFW for DEN, with the same test for what counts as a real difference.
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Tuesday is historically the most reliable day and Thursday the least, a gap of 7.7 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 81.6%
- Feb: 79.1%
- Mar: 76.7%
- Apr: 71.9%
- May: 59.9%
- Jun: 61.2%
- Jul: 69.0%
- Aug: 73.4%
- Sep: 75.3%
- Oct: 78.9%
- Nov: 81.3%
- Dec: 77.2%
May is historically the weakest month and January the strongest, a spread of 21.7 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 59.6% from 317 flights
- August 2023: 75.2% from 323 flights
- September 2023: 74.7% from 300 flights
- October 2023: 78.3% from 297 flights
- November 2023: 86.4% from 288 flights
- December 2023: 84.5% from 304 flights
- January 2024: 74.9% from 281 flights
- February 2024: 76.7% from 257 flights
- March 2024: 79.3% from 276 flights
- April 2024: 74.9% from 261 flights
- May 2024: 57.5% from 270 flights
- June 2024: 66.4% from 298 flights
- July 2024: 82.5% from 308 flights
- August 2024: 80.0% from 271 flights
- September 2024: 81.3% from 257 flights
- October 2024: 88.0% from 268 flights
- November 2024: 81.5% from 258 flights
- December 2024: 75.1% from 278 flights
- January 2025: 88.2% from 255 flights
- February 2025: 82.4% from 241 flights
- March 2025: 78.6% from 279 flights
- April 2025: 69.2% from 260 flights
- May 2025: 63.7% from 254 flights
- June 2025: 57.9% from 278 flights
- July 2025: 63.3% from 289 flights
- August 2025: 63.4% from 237 flights
- September 2025: 69.1% from 223 flights
- October 2025: 69.5% from 237 flights
- November 2025: 74.3% from 234 flights
- December 2025: 70.6% from 255 flights
- January 2026: 82.5% from 249 flights
- February 2026: 78.4% from 234 flights
- March 2026: 72.1% from 270 flights
- April 2026: 71.5% from 254 flights
- May 2026: 58.6% from 257 flights
- June 2026: 58.6% from 263 flights
- July 2026: 70.1% from 272 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 69.8% against 75.6% in the 12 months before — declining by 5.8 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 9,953 DAL → DEN flight records from the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, covering July 2023 – July 2026. Late means 15 or more minutes past scheduled arrival; cancelled and diverted flights are left out of on-time rates.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: How Long a Layover Needs to Be · Two Airlines on One Route · Best Time of Day to Fly From Major US Airports
Analysis last recomputed