Flight number record
UA 280
United Airlines · Denver to Anchorage
- Route
- DEN → ANC
- Departs
- 19:05
- Flights
- 359
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 280, check with United Airlines.
UA 280 lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 40 minutes on average. That rests on 359 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
Key figures
On time
78.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 359 completed flights
Avg delay
42 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
3.1%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 359 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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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 359 flights, with 19:00 (67 flights) and 11:20 (52 flights) next.
- Departs 19:05129 flights35.9%
- Departs 19:0067 flights18.7%
- Departs 11:2052 flights14.5%
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 19:05 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and UA 280 runs 11 points better at 78.8%. 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 280 next to DEN to ANC
Every carrier on DEN to ANC combined arrived on time 74.1% of the time across 852 flights, so UA 280 is 5 points ahead of it. United flew 615 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 77.6% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, close to this flight's figure.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 280thin sample | 359 | 78.8% | 42 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| All United Airlines on DEN–ANC | 615 | 77.6% | 46 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| All carriers on DEN–ANC | 852 | 74.1% | 50 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | 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 90 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%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights83.9%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 280 ranged from 74.5% on Saturday to 84.3% on Wednesday. With about 51 flights behind each day, a spread of 10 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 280 runs when it is late
The 76 late arrivals split 35 under half an hour, 30 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 11 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early75 flights20.9%
- Within 15 min208 flights57.9%
- 15–29 min late35 flights9.7%
- 30–59 min late30 flights8.4%
- 1–2 hours late8 flights2.2%
- 2+ hours late3 flights0.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 359 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
13 of 59 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 22% of them. In the other direction, 30 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 ANC.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 280
The latest arrival of the period was on 3 December 2025, 3 hours 26 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across December, March and August, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 3 December 2025 | 3 hours 26 minutes | Carrier |
| 15 March 2026 | 2 hours 11 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 9 August 2026 | 2 hours 3 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 March 2026 | 1 hour 50 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 17 August 2026 | 1 hour 45 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
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 3,187 reported delay minutes.
- 39%National Airspace System
- 35%Carrier
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
39% 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 1,234 minutes out of 3,187, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 3,187 delay minutes reported on UA 280.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% 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 3.1% 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.
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 six other city pairs in the data, including MCI to DEN (101), BZN to DEN (24) and TPA to DEN (21), 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. 359 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 78.8% on time with 0.00% cancelled over 359 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.