Flight number record
UA 486
United Airlines · Cleveland to Denver
- Route
- CLE → DEN
- Departs
- 16:39
- Flights
- 364
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 486, check with United Airlines.
UA 486 lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 486's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 53 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 363 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
6.1%
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 486 flies
UA 486 flies CLE to DEN without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 16:39, used on 42 of 364 flights, with 16:38 (41 flights) and 16:20 (37 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 16:3942 flights11.5%
- Departs 16:3841 flights11.3%
- Departs 16:2037 flights10.2%
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 16:39 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and UA 486 runs 11 points better at 82.9%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
Against the route
UA 486 next to CLE to DEN
Every carrier on CLE to DEN combined arrived on time 82.0% of the time across 1,840 flights, so UA 486 is about level with it. United flew 942 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 88.1% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 4 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 486thin sample | 364 | 82.9% | 67 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| All United Airlines on CLE–DEN | 942 | 88.1% | 64 min | 0.11% | A+ |
| All carriers on CLE–DEN | 1,840 | 82.0% | 61 min | 0.43% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 486 quarter by quarter
UA 486 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 90.1% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 74.7%, a swing of 15 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 flights74.7%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights90.1%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights82.2%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights84.6%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 486 ranged from 78.8% on Friday to 84.6% on Monday. 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 486 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 45% of the 4,154 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.
- 45%National Airspace System
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
45% 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 1,849 minutes out of 4,154, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 4,154 delay minutes reported on UA 486.
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
6.1% 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 1,201 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 four other city pairs in the data, including MCO to CLE (244), DEN to SEA (18) and DEN to SNA (13), but none flew often enough under UA 486 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to CLE 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 486
For a booking, read UA 486 as 82.9% on time with 0.00% cancelled over 364 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- CLE to DEN, every carrier and departure
- DEN to CLE, the return direction
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) 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
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.