Carrier route record
UACID→DEN
United Airlines · Cedar Rapids to Denver
- Flights
- 727
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 66%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on CID 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 an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 727 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate United on CID 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
79.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 712 completed flights
Avg delay
95 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.51%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.5%
Every carrier on CID to DEN, 1,103 flights
These figures cover 727 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.0% 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 CID to DEN
United flew 727 of the 1,103 flights on CID to DEN, most of the route. Its 79.2% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 79.2% to SkyWest at 72.3%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 727 | 79.2% | 95 min | 1.51% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 169 | 76.6% | 71 min | 1.18% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 207 | 72.3% | 95 min | 0.48% | C+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on CID 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 727 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am364 flights82.6%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm363 flights75.8%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 82.6% on time for the 8am–11am window against 75.8% for 2pm–5pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on CID to DEN through the year
July is the worst month at 65.5% on time, 24 points below February, the best at 89.1%. 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, Friday is the strongest day at 84.5% on time and Saturday the weakest at 74.0%. 11 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 14,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Carrier
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 15%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 15% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 14,063 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, 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 5,508 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.51% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.55%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.0% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 692 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 78.0% on time across 728 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.
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 CID 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 79.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 712 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CID to DEN, every carrier
- United on DEN to CID, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on CID to DEN76.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on CID to DEN72.3%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
- 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.