Flight number record

UA 478

United Airlines · Billings to Denver

Route: BIL → DEN
Departs: 14:35
Flights: 364
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 478, check with United Airlines.

UA 478 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 364 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

On time

74.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 358 completed flights

Avg delay

63 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

7.8%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 364 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 478 flies

UA 478 flies BIL to DEN without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 14:35, used on 155 of 364 flights, with 14:30 (52 flights) and 14:25 (41 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 14:35155 flights42.6%
Departs 14:3052 flights14.3%
Departs 14:2541 flights11.3%

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 14:35 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and UA 478 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 478 next to BIL to DEN

Every carrier on BIL to DEN combined arrived on time 82.3% of the time across 1,782 flights, so UA 478 is 8 points behind it. United flew 730 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 82.7% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 5 points.

UA 478 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 478thin sample	364	74.3%	63 min	0.00%	C+
All United Airlines on BIL–DEN	730	82.7%	69 min	0.00%	B+
All carriers on BIL–DEN	1,782	82.3%	76 min	0.84%	B+
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 478 quarter by quarter

UA 478 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 82.2% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 51.1%, a swing of 31 points on roughly 91 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 flights51.1%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights81.3%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights82.0%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights82.2%

Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 478 did best on Sunday at 88.2% on time and worst on Saturday at 68.6%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 20 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 478 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 43% of the 5,803 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
43%
Late-arriving aircraft
42%
Carrier
8%
Extreme weather
7%

42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 5,803 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 5,803 delay minutes reported on UA 478.

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

7.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The same number turns up on two other city pairs in the data, including DEN to LAS (36) and ORD to MSN (1), but none flew often enough under UA 478 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to BIL to DEN only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 364 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 478

For a booking, UA 478 is one of the weaker ways to fly BIL to DEN: 8 points below the route as a whole. If the schedule allows, compare it with the other departures listed on the route page before settling on this one.

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