Flight number record
UA 1220
United Airlines · Denver to Detroit
- Route
- DEN → DTW
- Departs
- 17:47
- Flights
- 327
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1220, check with United Airlines.
UA 1220 sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 327 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so UA 1220 runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 80 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 326 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.31%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
11.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 327 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When UA 1220 flies
UA 1220 flies DEN to DTW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:47, used on 84 of 327 flights, with 17:40 (71 flights) next.
- Departs 17:4784 flights25.7%
- Departs 17:4071 flights21.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 17:47 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and UA 1220 runs level with that at 69.3%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
UA 1220 next to DEN to DTW
Every carrier on DEN to DTW combined arrived on time 78.1% of the time across 3,109 flights, so UA 1220 is 9 points behind it. United flew 726 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 80.5% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight trails by 10 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1220thin sample | 327 | 69.3% | 71 min | 0.31% | C+ |
| All United Airlines on DEN–DTW | 726 | 80.5% | 63 min | 0.14% | B+ |
| All carriers on DEN–DTW | 3,109 | 78.1% | 66 min | 0.55% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 1220 quarter by quarter
UA 1220 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 86.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 56.7%, a swing of 30 points on roughly 65 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 202530 flights86.7%
- Oct–Dec 202555 flights72.7%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights73.3%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights65.9%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights56.7%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
By weekday, UA 1220 did best on Tuesday at 80.9% on time and worst on Friday at 60.9%. Each day rests on about 47 flights, so a gap of 20 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1220 runs when it is late
The 100 late arrivals split 31 under half an hour, 31 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 38 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early54 flights16.6%
- Within 15 min172 flights52.8%
- 15–29 min late31 flights9.5%
- 30–59 min late31 flights9.5%
- 1–2 hours late20 flights6.1%
- 2+ hours late18 flights5.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 326 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
11 of 91 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 12% of them. In the other direction, 20 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DTW.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1220
The latest arrival of the period was on 3 August 2026, 5 hours 40 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 3 August 2026 | 5 hours 40 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 July 2026 | 4 hours 57 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 May 2026 | 4 hours 14 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 22 August 2026 | 4 hours 10 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 March 2026 | 3 hours 22 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 1220 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 7,049 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
55% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,049 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 32 to one. The split is drawn from 7,049 delay minutes reported on UA 1220.
Cancellations are rare at 0.31%, below the national 1.89% 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 routes
What a delay on this flight costs
11.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,123 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The same number turns up on two other city pairs in the data, including BWI to LAX (37) and MSP to DEN (24), but none flew often enough under UA 1220 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DEN to DTW only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 327 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 1220
For a booking, UA 1220 is one of the weaker ways to fly DEN to DTW: 9 points below the route as a whole. If the schedule allows, compare it with the other departures listed on the route page before settling on this one.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to DTW, every carrier and departure
- DTW to DEN, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1745 on the same route90.9%
- Delta Air Lines 2787 on the same route84.3%
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- United Airlines on-time record
- Every United Airlines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.