Carrier route record
UAANC→DEN
United Airlines · Anchorage to Denver
- Flights
- 615
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 72%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on ANC to DEN earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 615 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's ANC to DEN record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 71 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 604 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.30%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
81.5%
Every carrier on ANC to DEN, 852 flights
These figures cover 615 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 ANC to DEN
United flew 615 of the 852 flights on ANC to DEN, most of the route. Its 84.4% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 89.8% to Southwest at 55.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 128 | 89.8% | 30 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 615 | 84.4% | 74 min | 1.30% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 109 | 55.0% | 64 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on ANC to DEN
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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 18 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am30 flights—
- 8am–11am80 flights75.0%
- 11am–2pm82 flights73.2%
- 2pm–5pm67 flights91.0%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am356 flights87.5%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 73.2% on time against 91.0% for 2pm–5pm. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 356 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on ANC to DEN through the year
January is the weak month at 69.4% on time, against 94.6% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. July was the busiest month here, with 91 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 93.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 80.9%, a spread of 12 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on ANC to DEN runs when it is late
United on ANC to DEN often beats the schedule: 226 of 604 completed flights, 37%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 94 late arrivals split 36 under half an hour, 30 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 28 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early226 flights37.4%
- Within 15 min284 flights47.0%
- 15–29 min late36 flights6.0%
- 30–59 min late30 flights5.0%
- 1–2 hours late18 flights3.0%
- 2+ hours late10 flights1.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 604 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
24 of 87 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 28% of them. In the other direction, 31 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 United on ANC to DEN
The latest arrival of the period was on 3 December 2025, 13 hours 50 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 3 December 2025 | 13 hours 50 minutes | Carrier |
| 8 March 2026 | 13 hours 30 minutes | Carrier |
| 3 July 2026 | 7 hours 46 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 January 2026 | 5 hours 56 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 26 May 2026 | 3 hours 2 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 52% of the 6,918 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Carrier
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,600 of the 6,918 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 6,918 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.30% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.49%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.6% 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.
At 2,405 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.6% on time across 615 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. 615 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 ANC to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 615 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 84.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 604 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ANC to DEN, every carrier
- United on DEN to ANC, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on ANC to DEN89.8%
- Southwest Airlines on ANC to DEN55.0%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.