Route profile
SNA→DEN
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Santa Ana to Denver, 846 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 82% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 11,373 flights. How this is calculated
SNA → DEN arrives on time 83.3% of the time; the return trip, DEN → SNA, arrives on time 79.9% of the time, a 3.4-point gap between the two directions of the same city pair.
SNA → DEN spends 23.2 minutes on the ground on an 846-mile trip: 14.6 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at SNA and 8.7 minutes from touchdown to gate at DEN.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Why SNA → DEN flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
SNA → DEN cancelled 75 of 11,373 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 152. The reason filed most often was extreme weather, 52.0% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 292 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 75 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.
39 cancellations, 52.0% of the total.
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
28 cancellations, 37.3% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
8 cancellations, 10.7% 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. Ordinary bad weather is filed under air traffic, so weather’s full share is larger than its bar.
75 coded cancellations were recorded on SNA → DEN; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
33 min late
against a median of 8 min early
Percentiles over 11,373 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at DEN after arriving from SNA.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 30% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 16% | High risk |
| 60 min | 11% | Some risk |
| 90 min | 5.7% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 3.3% | 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 0.66% of the time and diverts 0.34% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 11,259 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 33 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 11,373 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
SNA → DEN flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 92.2% of the time, against 73.0% for 3–6 PM departures, a gap of 19.2 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 5 AM: too few flights to score
- 6 AM: 91.0% on time from 745 flights
- 7 AM: 93.0% on time from 676 flights
- 8 AM: 92.5% on time from 1,209 flights
- 9 AM: 93.8% on time from 486 flights
- 10 AM: 89.1% on time from 618 flights
- 11 AM: 88.5% on time from 1,293 flights
- 12 PM: 84.5% on time from 443 flights
- 1 PM: 79.9% on time from 1,408 flights
- 2 PM: 68.1% on time from 602 flights
- 3 PM: 64.0% on time from 449 flights
- 4 PM: 74.3% on time from 1,056 flights
- 5 PM: 80.6% on time from 339 flights
- 6 PM: 82.3% on time from 1,235 flights
- 7 PM: 74.3% on time from 551 flights
- 8 PM: 82.4% on time from 229 flights
- 9 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Departure windows with fewer than 120 flights are not scored.
Why SNA → DEN runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s 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 SNA → DEN. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on SNA → DEN, at 41.7%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 92.2% of the time and 3–6 PM departures 73.0%.
How this route holds up in bad weather
July 2023 – July 2026
The harder-hit end is DEN, where the flight lands. Its figure counts departures from DEN, so it says more about how that airport copes than about this route. Bad weather cancels 4.0 times the normal rate at DEN against 2.0 times at SNA. Cancelled in bad weather against normal hours: SNA 1.9% against 1.0%, DEN 2.8% against 0.7%. Flights that did leave DEN in bad weather arrived on time 51.5% of the time, against 78.8% in normal hours.
Bad weather and normal hours at the airports
Scheduled departures, July 2023 – July 2026| Departures from | SNA | DEN |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled in bad weather | 1.9% | 2.8% |
| Cancelled in normal hours | 1.0% | 0.7% |
| Arrived on time, bad weather | 83.6% | 51.5% |
| Arrived on time, normal hours | 81.3% | 78.8% |
| Departures in bad weather | 7,919 | 92,610 |
These are airport figures, not route figures: every scheduled departure from SNA and DEN, to any destination, in hours the weather report called bad.
Weather source and limits. In full: SNA, DEN, What Weather Costs Each Airport, Who Cancels More When the Weather Turns, Airports That Change Places When Weather Turns.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 5,459 | 86.1% | 0.46% | -11 min | 5.6% |
| Southwest Airlines | 4,908 | 80.5% | 0.65% | -5 min | 5.9% |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,006 | 82.1% | 1.79% | -9 min | 6.7% |
United Airlines flew 48.0% of the 11,373 flights listed. Frontier Airlines cancelled 1.79% of its flights here against 0.46% for United Airlines.
United Airlines arrived on time 5.6 percentage points more often than Southwest Airlines on this route.
Other ways to fly Los Angeles to Denver
Airport pairs in the same two city markets, as the DOT defines them.
| Route | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LAX→DEN Los Angeles to Denver | 23,682 | 82.7% | 0.71% | -8 min | 75 |
| SNA→DEN this route Santa Ana to Denver | 11,373 | 83.3% | 0.66% | -8 min | 77 |
Flying to DEN from the Los Angeles area? Compare SNA, LAX, BUR, ONT for DEN, with the same test for what counts as a real difference.
Flights on this route
Flight numbers with at least 600 operations here and still on the schedule.
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Saturday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 7.0 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 86.5%
- Feb: 85.7%
- Mar: 86.2%
- Apr: 86.6%
- May: 81.7%
- Jun: 75.9%
- Jul: 73.8%
- Aug: 80.1%
- Sep: 87.6%
- Oct: 87.6%
- Nov: 88.3%
- Dec: 84.9%
July is historically the weakest month and November the strongest, a spread of 14.5 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 71.6% from 324 flights
- August 2023: 81.2% from 327 flights
- September 2023: 87.8% from 313 flights
- October 2023: 84.1% from 320 flights
- November 2023: 88.3% from 317 flights
- December 2023: 88.9% from 333 flights
- January 2024: 88.0% from 291 flights
- February 2024: 86.0% from 263 flights
- March 2024: 90.3% from 323 flights
- April 2024: 89.9% from 316 flights
- May 2024: 82.1% from 326 flights
- June 2024: 79.7% from 313 flights
- July 2024: 78.8% from 322 flights
- August 2024: 83.7% from 310 flights
- September 2024: 89.6% from 288 flights
- October 2024: 91.2% from 308 flights
- November 2024: 89.6% from 271 flights
- December 2024: 88.5% from 288 flights
- January 2025: 83.0% from 276 flights
- February 2025: 84.7% from 251 flights
- March 2025: 88.1% from 286 flights
- April 2025: 79.3% from 307 flights
- May 2025: 75.2% from 329 flights
- June 2025: 69.2% from 338 flights
- July 2025: 66.9% from 347 flights
- August 2025: 75.2% from 312 flights
- September 2025: 85.6% from 313 flights
- October 2025: 87.7% from 333 flights
- November 2025: 87.2% from 298 flights
- December 2025: 77.4% from 315 flights
- January 2026: 88.4% from 276 flights
- February 2026: 86.2% from 257 flights
- March 2026: 80.2% from 302 flights
- April 2026: 90.5% from 297 flights
- May 2026: 87.8% from 320 flights
- June 2026: 79.2% from 327 flights
- July 2026: 78.4% from 336 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 83.5% against 81.9% in the 12 months before — improving by 1.6 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 11,373 SNA → 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