Carrier route record
UABNA→DEN
United Airlines · Nashville to Denver
- Flights
- 1,168
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 32%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on BNA to DEN lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five 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 1,168 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate United on BNA to DEN from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,152 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.77%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.9%
Every carrier on BNA to DEN, 3,665 flights
These figures cover 1,168 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on BNA to DEN
United flew 1,168 of the 3,665 flights on BNA to DEN, about 32% of it. Its 79.3% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 79.3% to Southwest at 72.3%. 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) | 1,168 | 79.3% | 77 min | 0.77% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 349 | 76.1% | 87 min | 1.43% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 2,148 | 72.3% | 51 min | 0.42% | C+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on BNA 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 32 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–8am142 flights94.4%
- 8am–11am401 flights86.9%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm373 flights76.6%
- 5pm–8pm252 flights62.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.1% on time, against 94.4% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 401 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on BNA to DEN through the year
June is the worst month at 65.5% on time, 23 points below November, the best at 88.7%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 112 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 82.2% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 74.2%. 8 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 18,000 reported delay minutes.
- 34%National Airspace System
- 34%Carrier
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
34% 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 6,285 minutes out of 18,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 18,291 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 94.4% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.77%, 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
8.4% 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.
The 1,013 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 78.2% on time across 1,168 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,168 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking United on BNA to DEN
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 88.7% on time and June 65.5%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,152 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BNA to DEN, every carrier
- United on DEN to BNA, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on BNA to DEN76.1%
- Southwest Airlines on BNA to DEN72.3%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.