Carrier route record
UABDL→DEN
United Airlines · Hartford to Denver
- Flights
- 727
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 82%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on BDL 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 727 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's BDL to DEN record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 72 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 715 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.96%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
82.6%
Every carrier on BDL to DEN, 887 flights
These figures cover 727 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 BDL to DEN
United flew 727 of the 887 flights on BDL to DEN, most of the route. Its 84.5% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.5% to Southwest at 73.9%. One 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 727 | 84.5% | 75 min | 0.96% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 160 | 73.9% | 57 min | 1.25% | C |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on BDL 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 22 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am235 flights91.8%
- 8am–11am130 flights96.9%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm362 flights75.1%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 96.9% of the time, against 75.1% for the afternoon window. That is 22 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 362 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on BDL to DEN through the year
August is the worst month at 72.9% on time, 21 points below October, the best at 93.4%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 88.1% on time and Saturday the weakest at 79.6%, a spread of 9 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on BDL to DEN runs when it is late
United on BDL to DEN often beats the schedule: 268 of 715 completed flights, 37%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 111 late arrivals split 40 under half an hour, 29 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 42 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early268 flights37.5%
- Within 15 min336 flights47.0%
- 15–29 min late40 flights5.6%
- 30–59 min late29 flights4.1%
- 1–2 hours late19 flights2.7%
- 2+ hours late23 flights3.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 715 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
23 of 98 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 23% of them. In the other direction, 36 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 BDL to DEN
The latest arrival of the period was on 28 April 2026, 9 hours 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 28 April 2026 | 9 hours | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 July 2026 | 7 hours 5 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 7 August 2026 | 5 hours 21 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 19 December 2025 | 3 hours 47 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 24 May 2026 | 3 hours 45 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 8,345 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 27%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,345 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 8,345 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 96.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 0.96% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.69%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.9% 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 1,671 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 79.3% on time across 727 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. 727 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 BDL to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 727 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 84.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 715 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BDL to DEN, every carrier
- United on DEN to BDL, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on BDL to DEN73.9%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- 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.