OnTimeStats

Historical on-time performance

Washington to Denver

1,476 miData through May 2026Source: US DOT · BTS

Flights on DCA–DEN arrive on time 78% of the time over the last 12 months.

On-time rate78%arrived within 15 min
p90 delay50 min1 in 10 flights is worse (tail risk)
Cancelled0.8%of scheduled flights

based on 1,320 flights over the last 12 months. On-time means arriving within 15 minutes (BTS standard).

By airline

How each carrier compares

Too close to call — no single carrier is clearly more on-time here.

  • Frontier Airlines
    On-time78%
    Medianon time
    p9050 min
    Cancel0.9%
    Flights983
  • United Airlines
    On-time77%
    Medianon time
    p9050 min
    Cancel0.3%
    Flights337

Why flights run late

Delay causes

  • Airline25%
  • Weather10%
  • Air traffic (NAS)29%
  • Late aircraft35%
  • Security0%

Most delay minutes here are attributed to Late aircraft.

When flights don't go

Why flights were cancelled

  • Airline50%
  • Weather50%
  • Air traffic (NAS)0%
  • Security0%

Most cancellations here are attributed to Airline. Shares are among 10 cancellations with a reported cause (BTS reports causes from June 2003).

Over time

On-time trend

By season

On-time rate by month

When to fly

Best time to fly DCA → DEN

All airlines · rolling 36 months (2023-06 .. 2026-05).

Best time of day

On-time rates are fairly even by time of day on this route — ranging from 66% to 86% on time.

  • Middays86% on time · p90 20 min · 909 flights
  • Mornings86% on time · p90 20 min · 1,093 flights
  • Afternoons76% on time · p90 70 min · 1,228 flights
  • Evenings66% on time · p90 90 min · 1,036 flights

Best day of week

On-time rates are fairly even by day on this route — ranging from 74% to 82% on time.

  • Saturdays82% on time · p90 35 min · 625 flights
  • Sundays81% on time · p90 40 min · 625 flights
  • Tuesdays80% on time · p90 40 min · 572 flights
  • Wednesdays78% on time · p90 55 min · 572 flights
  • Mondays76% on time · p90 60 min · 621 flights
  • Thursdays75% on time · p90 50 min · 623 flights
  • Fridays74% on time · p90 65 min · 628 flights

Keep exploring

Related pages

Methodology

A flight is on time when it arrives within 15 minutes of schedule — the US DOT / BTS standard. Median and p90(the “1-in-10 bad day”) are read from the full arrival-delay distribution, never averaged across periods.

Figures cover a carrier’s own BTS-coded flights. Cells below ~200 flights are flagged as limited data. All numbers are pre-computed from public BTS On-Time Performance data.