Flight number record
UA 480
United Airlines · Denver to Columbus
- Route
- DEN → CMH
- Departs
- 09:35
- Flights
- 257
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 480, check with United Airlines.
UA 480 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 15 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 257 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 480's record is 15 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 145 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
91.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 256 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.39%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
2.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 257 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 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.
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Schedule
When UA 480 flies
UA 480 flies DEN to CMH without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 09:35, used on 83 of 257 flights, with 09:37 (76 flights) and 09:40 (42 flights) next.
- Departs 09:3583 flights32.3%
- Departs 09:3776 flights29.6%
- Departs 09:4042 flights16.3%
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 09:35 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and UA 480 runs 8 points better at 91.8%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
UA 480 next to DEN to CMH
Every carrier on DEN to CMH combined arrived on time 72.9% of the time across 1,776 flights, so UA 480 is 19 points ahead of it. United flew 728 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.1% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 13 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 480thin sample | 257 | 91.8% | 69 min | 0.39% | A+ |
| All United Airlines on DEN–CMH | 728 | 83.1% | 65 min | 0.69% | B+ |
| All carriers on DEN–CMH | 1,776 | 72.9% | 58 min | 0.73% | C+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 480 quarter by quarter
UA 480 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 97.8% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 87.6%, a swing of 10 points on roughly 86 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.
- Oct–Dec 202514 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights87.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights97.8%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights90.3%
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 480 ranged from 86.5% on Saturday to 97.3% on Monday. With about 37 flights behind each day, a spread of 11 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 480 runs when it is late
UA 480 often beats the schedule: 104 of 256 completed flights, 41%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 21 late arrivals split 5 under half an hour, 9 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 7 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early104 flights40.6%
- Within 15 min131 flights51.2%
- 15–29 min late5 flights2.0%
- 30–59 min late9 flights3.5%
- 1–2 hours late5 flights2.0%
- 2+ hours late2 flights0.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 256 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 27 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 11 still arrived on time. Only 5 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 480
The latest arrival of the period was on 6 March 2026, 5 hours 15 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 6 March 2026 | 5 hours 15 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 January 2026 | 3 hours 49 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 December 2025 | 1 hour 50 minutes | Carrier |
| 24 March 2026 | 1 hour 48 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 July 2026 | 1 hour 27 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 480 runs late
Carrier accounts for 48% of the 1,453 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%Carrier
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 703 of the 1,453 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,453 delay minutes reported on UA 480.
Cancellations are rare at 0.39%, below the national 1.89% 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.7% 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.
The 1,154 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.
The same number turns up on three other city pairs in the data, including EWR to DEN (108), CMH to IAH (35) and PSC to DEN (21), but none flew often enough under UA 480 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DEN to CMH only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 257 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 480
For a booking, UA 480 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 91.8% on time and 0.39% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to CMH, every carrier and departure
- CMH to DEN, the return direction
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) 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.