Flight number record
UA 479
United Airlines · Cincinnati to Denver
- Route
- CVG → DEN
- Departs
- 15:31
- Flights
- 364
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 479, check with United Airlines.
UA 479 earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 479's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 66 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 355 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.55%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
6.2%
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 479 flies
UA 479 flies CVG to DEN without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 15:31, used on 86 of 364 flights, with 15:29 (78 flights) and 15:26 (63 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 15:3186 flights23.6%
- Departs 15:2978 flights21.4%
- Departs 15:2663 flights17.3%
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 15:31 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and UA 479 runs 12 points better at 84.2%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
Against the route
UA 479 next to CVG to DEN
Every carrier on CVG to DEN combined arrived on time 81.6% of the time across 1,521 flights, so UA 479 is 3 points ahead of it. United flew 728 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 85.8% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 5 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 479thin sample | 364 | 84.2% | 77 min | 0.55% | B+ |
| All United Airlines on CVG–DEN | 728 | 85.8% | 81 min | 0.69% | A+ |
| All carriers on CVG–DEN | 1,521 | 81.6% | 77 min | 0.99% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 479 quarter by quarter
UA 479 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 91.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 70.6%, a swing of 20 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 flights70.6%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights86.8%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights91.0%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights87.8%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 479 ranged from 80.8% on Friday to 86.3% on Sunday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 6 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Delay causes
Why UA 479 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 4,335 reported delay minutes.
- 38%National Airspace System
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
38% 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 1,647 minutes out of 4,335, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 4,335 delay minutes reported on UA 479.
Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, below the national 1.81% 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
6.2% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
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. 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 one other city pair in the data, including ORD to ONT (1), but none flew often enough under UA 479 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to CVG 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 479
For a booking, read UA 479 as 84.2% on time with 0.55% cancelled over 364 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- CVG to DEN, every carrier and departure
- DEN to CVG, the return direction
- United Airlines 1666 on the same route87.3%
- Frontier Airlines 3725 on the same route86.0%
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- 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.