Carrier route record
UAABQ→DEN
United Airlines · Albuquerque to Denver
- Flights
- 845
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 26%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. 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 rests on 845 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 908 at 86.2% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, United's ABQ to DEN record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 57 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 834 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.83%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
82.3%
Every carrier on ABQ to DEN, 3,216 flights
These figures cover 845 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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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on ABQ to DEN
United flew 845 of the 3,216 flights on ABQ to DEN, about 26% of it. Its 83.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 86.2% to Southwest at 79.6%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 86.2% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 79.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,463 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 908 | 86.2% | 81 min | 0.55% | A+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 845 | 83.0% | 78 min | 0.83% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,463 | 79.6% | 58 min | 0.48% | 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
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 26 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am365 flights90.9%
- 8am–11am1 flights—
- 11am–2pm249 flights81.6%
- 2pm–5pm167 flights74.5%
- 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 90.9% 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
July is the worst month at 73.5% on time, 18 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 86.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.7%, a spread of 8 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on ABQ to DEN runs when it is late
United on ABQ to DEN often beats the schedule: 230 of 834 completed flights, 28%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 142 late arrivals split 47 under half an hour, 43 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 52 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early230 flights27.6%
- Within 15 min462 flights55.4%
- 15–29 min late47 flights5.6%
- 30–59 min late43 flights5.2%
- 1–2 hours late27 flights3.2%
- 2+ hours late25 flights3.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 834 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
21 of 128 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 16% of them. 35 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on ABQ to DEN
The latest arrival of the period was on 1 September 2025, 7 hours 49 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 1 September 2025 | 7 hours 49 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 1 April 2026 | 7 hours 12 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 June 2026 | 6 hours 35 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 8 October 2025 | 5 hours 46 minutes | Carrier |
| 25 May 2026 | 5 hours 11 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
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 11,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%National Airspace System
- 24%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 37 to one. The split is drawn from 11,133 reported delay minutes.
36% 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 3,953 minutes out of 11,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.83%, below the national 1.89% 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
6.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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 76.8% on time across 845 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 845 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. 845 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 83.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 834 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ABQ to DEN, every carrier
- United on DEN to ABQ, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on ABQ to DEN86.2%
- Southwest Airlines on ABQ to DEN79.6%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.