Carrier route record

UAABQ→DEN

United Airlines · Albuquerque to Denver

Flights: 817
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 26%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.

United on ABQ to DEN lands a B+, 6 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 a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 817 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 895 at 85.6% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, United's ABQ to DEN record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 59 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 807 completed flights

Avg delay

78 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.86%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.1%

Every carrier on ABQ to DEN, 3,175 flights

These figures cover 817 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.

Carrier by carrier

United against every carrier on ABQ to DEN

United flew 817 of the 3,175 flights on ABQ to DEN, about 26% of it. Its 83.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 85.6% to Southwest at 79.1%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 85.6% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 79.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,463 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ABQ to DEN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	895	85.6%	57 min	0.78%	A+
United Airlines (this page)	817	83.5%	78 min	0.86%	B+
Southwest Airlines	1,463	79.1%	59 min	0.62%	B+

SkyWest leads Southwest by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

Flight by flight

United flight numbers on ABQ to DEN

Departure window

When United runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 25 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am365 flights89.8%
8am–11am1 flights—
11am–2pm249 flights80.4%
2pm–5pm139 flights81.0%
5pm–8pm63 flights64.5%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.5% on time, against 89.8% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

United on ABQ to DEN through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.November best, July worst

July is the worst month at 70.0% on time, 22 points below November, the best at 91.5%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. May was the busiest month here, with 85 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.0%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why United runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 10,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
40%
National Airspace System
32%
Carrier
27%
Extreme weather
1%

40% 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 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 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 10,331 reported delay minutes.

32% 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 3,315 minutes out of 10,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.86%, below the national 1.81% 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 stage length

What a delay here costs

5.7% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 349 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.7% on time across 817 flights, 7 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 7 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 817 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 United on ABQ to DEN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 817 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 83.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 807 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures