Carrier route record
UABUR→DEN
United Airlines · Burbank to Denver
- Flights
- 881
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 40%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on BUR to DEN earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 881 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's BUR to DEN record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 83 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 871 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.45%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
84.0%
Every carrier on BUR to DEN, 2,219 flights
These figures cover 881 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 BUR to DEN
United flew 881 of the 2,219 flights on BUR to DEN, about 40% of it. Its 85.9% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 84.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 100.0% to Frontier at 76.7%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 881 | 85.9% | 65 min | 0.45% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,294 | 82.9% | 65 min | 0.70% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 43 | 76.7% | 158 min | 0.00% | B+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on BUR to DEN
Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 881 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am364 flights89.2%
- 11am–2pm364 flights81.9%
- 2pm–5pm8 flights—
- 5pm–8pm145 flights86.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% 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 81.9% on time against 89.2% for 8am–11am. 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on BUR to DEN through the year
July is the worst month at 69.3% on time, 26 points below April, the best at 95.0%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 91 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 90.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 82.9%. 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. National Airspace System accounts for 45% of the 8,013 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.
- 45%National Airspace System
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
45% 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 3,580 minutes out of 8,013, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 8,013 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 89.2% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.45%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.8% 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.
The 850 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.7% on time across 881 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 881 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 BUR to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 881 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 85.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 871 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BUR to DEN, every carrier
- United on DEN to BUR, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on BUR to DEN82.9%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- Late aircraft, weather, or the airline: what actually causes US flight delays
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.