Flight number record

UA 1226

United Airlines · Phoenix to Denver

Route: PHX → DEN
Departs: 16:28
Flights: 311
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1226, check with United Airlines.

UA 1226 sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 311 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.

On time

74.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 304 completed flights

Avg delay

66 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.93%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

11.5%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 311 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.5% 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 1226 flies

UA 1226 flies PHX to DEN without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 16:28, used on 83 of 311 flights, with 16:35 (58 flights) and 15:30 (42 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 16:2883 flights26.7%
Departs 16:3558 flights18.6%
Departs 15:3042 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 16:28 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and UA 1226 runs level with that at 74.3%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

UA 1226 next to PHX to DEN

Every carrier on PHX to DEN combined arrived on time 77.2% of the time across 8,920 flights, so UA 1226 is 3 points behind it. United flew 2,370 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.5% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 5 points.

UA 1226 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 1226thin sample	311	74.3%	66 min	1.93%	C
All United Airlines on PHX–DEN	2,370	83.5%	75 min	0.59%	B+
All carriers on PHX–DEN	8,920	77.2%	65 min	0.70%	B+
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 1226 quarter by quarter

UA 1226 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 83.3% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 60.2%, a swing of 23 points on roughly 78 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 flights60.2%
Oct–Dec 202588 flights80.2%
Jan–Mar 202689 flights78.4%
Apr–Jun 202642 flights83.3%

Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 1226 did best on Tuesday at 82.9% on time and worst on Saturday at 63.4%. Each day rests on about 44 flights, so a gap of 20 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 1226 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 52% of the 5,134 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

National Airspace System
52%
Late-arriving aircraft
32%
Carrier
16%

52% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 2,676 minutes out of 5,134, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 5,134 delay minutes reported on UA 1226.

Cancellations sit at 1.93% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.32%.

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. 11.5% 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.

The 602 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The same number turns up on seven other city pairs in the data, including DEN to GTF (53), EWR to SRQ (30) and TYS to DEN (9), but none flew often enough under UA 1226 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to PHX to DEN only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 311 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 1226

For a booking, read UA 1226 as 74.3% on time with 1.93% cancelled over 311 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.

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