Flight number record
UA 1978
United Airlines · Denver to Cincinnati
- Route
- DEN → CVG
- Departs
- 09:40
- Flights
- 343
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1978, check with United Airlines.
UA 1978 earns an A+. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 16 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 343 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 1978's record is 16 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 160 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
93.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 342 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.29%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
2.3%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 343 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Schedule
When UA 1978 flies
UA 1978 flies DEN to CVG without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 09:40, used on 172 of 343 flights, with 09:35 (65 flights) and 09:45 (61 flights) next.
- Departs 09:40172 flights50.1%
- Departs 09:3565 flights19.0%
- Departs 09:4561 flights17.8%
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 09:40 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and UA 1978 runs 9 points better at 93.3%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
UA 1978 next to DEN to CVG
Every carrier on DEN to CVG combined arrived on time 79.8% of the time across 1,496 flights, so UA 1978 is 14 points ahead of it. United flew 727 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 84.4% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 15 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1978thin sample | 343 | 93.3% | 70 min | 0.29% | A+ |
| All United Airlines on DEN–CVG | 727 | 84.4% | 60 min | 0.41% | B+ |
| All carriers on DEN–CVG | 1,496 | 79.8% | 55 min | 0.74% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 1978 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter UA 1978 held fairly steady: 86.7% in Jul–Sep 2025, 95.6% in Oct–Dec 2025, 92.6% in Jan–Mar 2026, 94.5% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 91.9% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 9 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights86.7%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights95.6%
- Jan–Mar 202669 flights92.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights94.5%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights91.9%
Scale runs 80% to 100%.
By weekday, UA 1978 ranged from 89.8% on Tuesday to 98.0% on Thursday. With about 49 flights behind each day, a spread of 8 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1978 runs when it is late
UA 1978 often beats the schedule: 124 of 342 completed flights, 36%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 23 late arrivals split 10 under half an hour, 5 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 8 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early124 flights36.3%
- Within 15 min195 flights57.0%
- 15–29 min late10 flights2.9%
- 30–59 min late5 flights1.5%
- 1–2 hours late5 flights1.5%
- 2+ hours late3 flights0.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 342 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 25 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 8 still arrived on time. Only 6 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1978
The latest arrival of the period was on 19 December 2025, 6 hours 12 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 19 December 2025 | 6 hours 12 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 July 2026 | 3 hours 36 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 September 2025 | 2 hours 38 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 November 2025 | 1 hour 43 minutes | Carrier |
| 5 June 2026 | 1 hour 42 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why UA 1978 runs late
Carrier accounts for 46% of the 1,612 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%National Airspace System
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 1,612 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 35 to one. The split is drawn from 1,612 delay minutes reported on UA 1978.
Cancellations are rare at 0.29%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.3% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 1,069 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 JAC to DEN (233) and MSO to DEN (18), but none flew often enough under UA 1978 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DEN to CVG only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 343 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 1978
For a booking, UA 1978 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 93.3% on time and 0.29% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to CVG, every carrier and departure
- CVG to DEN, the return direction
- United Airlines 1615 on the same route75.3%
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) 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.