Flight number record
UA 728
United Airlines · Columbus to Denver
- Route
- CMH → DEN
- Departs
- 08:45
- Flights
- 344
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 728, check with United Airlines.
UA 728 earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 344 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 728's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 82 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 339 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.16%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
4.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 344 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Schedule
When UA 728 flies
UA 728 flies CMH to DEN without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 08:45, used on 73 of 344 flights, with 08:35 (53 flights) and 09:00 (50 flights) next.
- Departs 08:4573 flights21.2%
- Departs 08:3553 flights15.4%
- Departs 09:0050 flights14.5%
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 08:45 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and UA 728 runs level with that at 85.5%. 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 728 next to CMH to DEN
Every carrier on CMH to DEN combined arrived on time 79.4% of the time across 1,776 flights, so UA 728 is 6 points ahead of it. United flew 728 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 81.6% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 7 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 728thin sample | 344 | 85.5% | 89 min | 1.16% | A |
| All United Airlines on CMH–DEN | 728 | 81.6% | 72 min | 0.82% | B+ |
| All carriers on CMH–DEN | 1,776 | 79.4% | 71 min | 0.62% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 728 quarter by quarter
UA 728 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 96.7% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 80.2%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 69 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 202530 flights96.7%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights80.2%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights81.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights90.1%
- Jul–Sep 202641 flights87.5%
Scale runs 70% to 100%.
By weekday, UA 728 did best on Saturday at 93.3% on time and worst on Tuesday at 73.5%. Each day rests on about 49 flights, so a gap of 20 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 728 runs when it is late
UA 728 often beats the schedule: 87 of 339 completed flights, 26%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 49 late arrivals split 18 under half an hour, 15 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 16 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early87 flights25.7%
- Within 15 min203 flights59.9%
- 15–29 min late18 flights5.3%
- 30–59 min late15 flights4.4%
- 1–2 hours late5 flights1.5%
- 2+ hours late11 flights3.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 339 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 34 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 4 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 19 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DEN.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 728
The latest arrival of the period was on 15 December 2025, 9 hours 50 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 15 December 2025 | 9 hours 50 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 December 2025 | 9 hours 45 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 March 2026 | 6 hours 37 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 February 2026 | 5 hours 3 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 May 2026 | 3 hours 37 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why UA 728 runs late
Carrier accounts for 66% of the 4,356 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 66%Carrier
- 16%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 66%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,882 of the 4,356 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,356 delay minutes reported on UA 728.
Cancellations sit at 1.16% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% 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 CLE to ORD (21), DEN to SJC (19) and ORD to DCA (17), but none flew often enough under UA 728 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to CMH to DEN only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 344 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 728
For a booking, UA 728 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 85.5% on time and 1.16% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- CMH to DEN, every carrier and departure
- DEN to CMH, the return direction
- United Airlines 1389 on the same route77.2%
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.