Carrier route record
UAANC→DEN
United Airlines · Anchorage to Denver
- Flights
- 560
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 76%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on ANC 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 560 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's ANC 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.
Key figures
On time
83.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 552 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.25%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
82.5%
Every carrier on ANC to DEN, 735 flights
These figures cover 560 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on ANC to DEN
United flew 560 of the 735 flights on ANC to DEN, most of the route. Its 83.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 86.7% to Southwest at 59.6%. 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 | 86.7% | 44 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 560 | 83.5% | 71 min | 1.25% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 47 | 59.6% | 62 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on ANC 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 20 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am18 flights—
- 8am–11am59 flights73.7%
- 11am–2pm41 flights65.9%
- 2pm–5pm79 flights86.1%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am363 flights86.3%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. 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 65.9% on time against 86.3% for 8pm–5am. 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 363 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. June was the busiest month here, with 72 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.7%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 53% of the 6,424 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.
- 53%Carrier
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 53%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 3,384 of the 6,424 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 6,424 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.25% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.18%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 78.1% on time across 559 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 560 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. 560 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. 552 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.