Flight number record
UA 397
United Airlines · Denver to Minneapolis
- Route
- DEN → MSP
- Departs
- 09:35
- Flights
- 270
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 397, check with United Airlines.
UA 397 earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 50 minutes. That rests on 270 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 397's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 94 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 269 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
3.3%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 270 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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.
Schedule
When UA 397 flies
UA 397 flies DEN to MSP without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 09:35, used on 192 of 270 flights, with 09:40 (35 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 09:35192 flights71.1%
- Departs 09:4035 flights13.0%
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 09:35 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and UA 397 runs 3 points better at 87.0%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
Against the route
UA 397 next to DEN to MSP
Every carrier on DEN to MSP combined arrived on time 77.6% of the time across 5,848 flights, so UA 397 is 9 points ahead of it. United flew 1,457 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.9% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 8 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 397thin sample | 270 | 87.0% | 51 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| All United Airlines on DEN–MSP | 1,457 | 79.9% | 68 min | 0.34% | B+ |
| All carriers on DEN–MSP | 5,848 | 77.6% | 62 min | 0.68% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 397 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter UA 397 held fairly steady: 85.6% in Oct–Dec 2025, 89.8% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 85.9% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 4 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 20256 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202590 flights85.6%
- Jan–Mar 202688 flights89.8%
- Apr–Jun 202686 flights85.9%
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 397 did best on Tuesday at 95.0% on time and worst on Sunday at 77.5%. Each day rests on about 39 flights, so a gap of 18 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why UA 397 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 55% of the 1,778 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.
- 55%Carrier
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%National Airspace System
The largest share of delay minutes, 55%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 974 of the 1,778 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,778 delay minutes reported on UA 397.
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 3.3% 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.
The 680 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 nine other city pairs in the data, including SEA to DEN (36), DEN to SJC (36) and ONT to IAH (31), but none flew often enough under UA 397 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DEN to MSP only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 270 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 397
For a booking, UA 397 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 87.0% on time and 0.00% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to MSP, every carrier and departure
- MSP to DEN, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1129 on the same route91.2%
- United Airlines 732 on the same route83.5%
- Frontier Airlines 1292 on the same route61.7%
- United Airlines 2076 on the same route72.4%
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) 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.