Carrier route record
UACLT→DEN
United Airlines · Charlotte to Denver
- Flights
- 675
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 24%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on CLT 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 a little over an hour. That rests on 675 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's CLT to DEN record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 75 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 665 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.19%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.0%
Every carrier on CLT to DEN, 2,816 flights
These figures cover 675 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 CLT to DEN
United flew 675 of the 2,816 flights on CLT to DEN, about 24% of it. Its 85.1% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 85.1% to Southwest at 65.6%. Three 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) | 675 | 85.1% | 79 min | 1.19% | A |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 20 | 84.2% | 214 min | 5.00% | B− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 215 | 76.9% | 56 min | 1.40% | B |
| American Airlines | 1,717 | 75.1% | 61 min | 1.22% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 189 | 65.6% | 52 min | 1.59% | C |
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 16 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–8am—
- 8am–11am364 flights92.7%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm311 flights76.3%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 92.7% of the time, against 76.3% for the afternoon window. That is 16 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on CLT to DEN through the year
August is the worst month at 63.9% on time, 29 points below November, the best at 93.2%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 87.2% on time and Saturday the weakest at 79.1%. 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 7,857 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Carrier
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, 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 3,214 of the 7,857 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 7,857 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 92.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.19% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.30%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.2% 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 1,337 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 77.6% on time across 675 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 675 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 CLT to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 675 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 85.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 665 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLT to DEN, every carrier
- United on DEN to CLT, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on CLT to DEN76.9%
- American Airlines on CLT to DEN75.1%
- Southwest Airlines on CLT to DEN65.6%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.