Flight number record

UA 1197

United Airlines · Newark to Denver

Route: EWR → DEN
Departs: 17:00
Flights: 363
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1197, check with United Airlines.

UA 1197 draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 363 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so UA 1197 runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 102 extra late arrivals.

On time

67.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 353 completed flights

Avg delay

72 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.48%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

13.9%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 363 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Schedule

When UA 1197 flies

UA 1197 flies EWR to DEN without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:00, used on 82 of 363 flights, with 16:30 (58 flights) and 16:47 (49 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 17:0082 flights22.6%
Departs 16:3058 flights16.0%
Departs 16:4749 flights13.5%

Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.

A 17:00 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 1197 runs level with that at 67.4%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

Against the route

UA 1197 next to EWR to DEN

Every carrier on EWR to DEN combined arrived on time 78.3% of the time across 3,368 flights, so UA 1197 is 11 points behind it. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 12 points.

UA 1197 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 1197thin sample	363	67.4%	72 min	2.48%	C
All United Airlines on EWR–DEN	3,368	78.3%	73 min	1.31%	B
All carriers on EWR–DEN	3,368	78.3%	73 min	1.31%	B
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 1197 quarter by quarter

UA 1197 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 83.1% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 48.8%, a swing of 34 points on roughly 91 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights48.8%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights68.1%
Jan–Mar 202689 flights69.0%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights83.1%

Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 1197 did best on Monday at 74.0% on time and worst on Sunday at 58.0%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 16 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 1197 runs late

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 8,301 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
40%
National Airspace System
34%
Carrier
23%
Extreme weather
4%

40% 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 8,301 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 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 8,301 delay minutes reported on UA 1197.

Cancellations sit at 2.48% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

At 1,605 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 same number turns up on five other city pairs in the data, including MCO to EWR (49), MIA to EWR (31) and SEA to EWR (31), but none flew often enough under UA 1197 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to EWR to DEN only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 363 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.

What to do with this

Booking UA 1197

For a booking, UA 1197 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 13.9% of its completed flights arrived an hour or more late, which a short layover will not absorb. If the onward flight is on a separate ticket, the risk sits with you.

Where to go next

A flight number here means United Airlines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures