Flight number record
UA 616
United Airlines · Denver to Charlotte
- Route
- DEN → CLT
- Departs
- 17:35
- Flights
- 308
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 616, check with United Airlines.
UA 616 sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 308 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so UA 616 runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 91 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 305 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.97%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
13.8%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 308 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Schedule
When UA 616 flies
UA 616 flies DEN to CLT without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:35, used on 58 of 308 flights, with 17:38 (49 flights) and 17:40 (41 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 17:3558 flights18.8%
- Departs 17:3849 flights15.9%
- Departs 17:4041 flights13.3%
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 17:35 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 616 runs level with that at 68.5%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
Against the route
UA 616 next to DEN to CLT
Every carrier on DEN to CLT combined arrived on time 82.4% of the time across 2,813 flights, so UA 616 is 14 points behind it. United flew 675 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 77.6% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 11 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 616thin sample | 308 | 68.5% | 75 min | 0.97% | C+ |
| All United Airlines on DEN–CLT | 675 | 77.6% | 66 min | 0.59% | B+ |
| All carriers on DEN–CLT | 2,813 | 82.4% | 68 min | 1.28% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 616 quarter by quarter
UA 616 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 81.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 55.4%, a swing of 26 points on roughly 77 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 flights55.4%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights79.1%
- Jan–Mar 202663 flights81.7%
- Apr–Jun 202662 flights59.7%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 616 did best on Sunday at 79.1% on time and worst on Thursday at 55.8%. Each day rests on about 44 flights, so a gap of 23 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why UA 616 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 7,159 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%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
55% 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 7,159 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 54 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 7,159 delay minutes reported on UA 616.
Cancellations sit at 0.97% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,337 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 SBA to DEN (83), DEN to PBI (32) and PSP to DEN (24), but none flew often enough under UA 616 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DEN to CLT only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 308 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 616
For a booking, UA 616 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 13.8% of its completed flights arrived an hour or more late, which a short layover will not absorb. If the onward flight is on a separate ticket, the risk sits with you.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to CLT, every carrier and departure
- CLT to DEN, the return direction
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) 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.