Flight number record
UA 778
United Airlines · Denver to Spokane
- Route
- DEN → GEG
- Departs
- 19:40
- Flights
- 345
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 778, check with United Airlines.
UA 778 sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 345 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so UA 778 runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 81 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 344 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
9.6%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 345 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.6% 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 778 flies
UA 778 flies DEN to GEG without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 19:40, used on 121 of 345 flights, with 19:49 (103 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 19:40121 flights35.1%
- Departs 19:49103 flights29.9%
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 19:40 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 778 runs level with that at 69.5%. 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 778 next to DEN to GEG
Every carrier on DEN to GEG combined arrived on time 75.2% of the time across 2,062 flights, so UA 778 is 6 points behind it. United flew 833 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 74.3% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 10 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 778thin sample | 345 | 69.5% | 60 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| All United Airlines on DEN–GEG | 833 | 74.3% | 53 min | 0.24% | C+ |
| All carriers on DEN–GEG | 2,062 | 75.2% | 50 min | 0.34% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 778 quarter by quarter
UA 778 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 78.8% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 62.0%, a swing of 17 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.
- Jul–Sep 202592 flights62.0%
- Oct–Dec 202577 flights71.4%
- Jan–Mar 202685 flights78.8%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights66.7%
Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 778 did best on Saturday at 83.7% on time and worst on Friday at 63.3%. Each day rests on about 49 flights, so a gap of 20 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why UA 778 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 6,279 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.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 40%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
51% 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 6,279 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 51 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 6,279 delay minutes reported on UA 778.
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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.6% 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 836 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 MEM to DEN (82), PNS to DEN (25) and LGA to DEN (19), but none flew often enough under UA 778 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DEN to GEG only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 345 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 778
For a booking, UA 778 is one of the weaker ways to fly DEN to GEG: 6 points below the route as a whole. If the schedule allows, compare it with the other departures listed on the route page before settling on this one.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to GEG, every carrier and departure
- GEG to DEN, the return direction
- United Airlines 295 on the same route80.5%
- 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.