Flight number record
UA 280
United Airlines · Denver to Anchorage
- Route
- DEN → ANC
- Departs
- 19:05
- Flights
- 297
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 280, check with United Airlines.
UA 280 lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 40 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 297 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
Key figures
On time
77.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 297 completed flights
Avg delay
42 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
3.0%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 297 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Schedule
When UA 280 flies
UA 280 flies DEN to ANC without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 19:05, used on 129 of 297 flights, with 19:00 (67 flights) and 19:18 (37 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 19:05129 flights43.4%
- Departs 19:0067 flights22.6%
- Departs 19:1837 flights12.5%
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 19:05 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 280 runs 10 points better at 77.8%. 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 280 next to DEN to ANC
Every carrier on DEN to ANC combined arrived on time 74.8% of the time across 734 flights, so UA 280 is 3 points ahead of it. United flew 559 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 78.1% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, close to this flight's figure.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 280thin sample | 297 | 77.8% | 42 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| All United Airlines on DEN–ANC | 559 | 78.1% | 45 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| All carriers on DEN–ANC | 734 | 74.8% | 46 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 280 quarter by quarter
UA 280 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 84.6% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 69.6%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 99 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 202524 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights69.6%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights74.4%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights84.6%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 280 did best on Wednesday at 85.7% on time and worst on Saturday at 71.4%. Each day rests on about 42 flights, so a gap of 14 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why UA 280 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 2,746 reported delay minutes.
- 42%National Airspace System
- 34%Carrier
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
42% 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 1,153 minutes out of 2,746, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 2,746 delay minutes reported on UA 280.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are 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 3.0% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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.
At 2,405 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 seven other city pairs in the data, including MCI to DEN (60), MIA to DEN (32) and BZN to DEN (24), but none flew often enough under UA 280 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DEN to ANC only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 297 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 280
For a booking, read UA 280 as 77.8% on time with 0.00% cancelled over 297 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to ANC, every carrier and departure
- ANC to DEN, the return direction
- Denver International (DEN) 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
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.