Carrier route record
UACMH→DEN
United Airlines · Columbus to Denver
- Flights
- 728
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 41%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on CMH to DEN lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 728 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's CMH to DEN record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 43 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 716 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.82%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
79.4%
Every carrier on CMH to DEN, 1,776 flights
These figures cover 728 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on CMH to DEN
United flew 728 of the 1,776 flights on CMH to DEN, about 41% of it. Its 81.6% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 81.6% to Frontier at 71.0%. 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) | 728 | 81.6% | 72 min | 0.82% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 923 | 78.8% | 68 min | 0.54% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 125 | 71.0% | 77 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on CMH to DEN
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 31 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am365 flights85.8%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm311 flights81.0%
- 5pm–8pm52 flights54.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 54.9% on time, against 85.8% for the 8am–11am 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 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on CMH to DEN through the year
August is the worst month at 65.6% on time, 26 points below May, the best at 91.9%. 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, Saturday is the strongest day at 84.8% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 76.9%, a spread of 8 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on CMH to DEN runs when it is late
United on CMH to DEN often beats the schedule: 198 of 716 completed flights, 28%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 132 late arrivals split 52 under half an hour, 36 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 44 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early198 flights27.7%
- Within 15 min386 flights53.9%
- 15–29 min late52 flights7.3%
- 30–59 min late36 flights5.0%
- 1–2 hours late22 flights3.1%
- 2+ hours late22 flights3.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 716 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
20 of 109 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 18% of them. In the other direction, 43 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 CMH to DEN
The latest arrival of the period was on 15 December 2025, 9 hours 50 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 15 December 2025 | 9 hours 50 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 December 2025 | 9 hours 45 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 March 2026 | 6 hours 37 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 March 2026 | 5 hours 25 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 July 2026 | 5 hours 9 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 47% of the 9,533 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%Carrier
- 34%National Airspace System
- 17%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 3,250 minutes out of 9,533, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 9,533 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 47%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,498 of the 9,533 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, below the national 1.89% 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
6.1% 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.
The 1,154 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.
The return leg runs 83.1% on time across 728 flights, within 2 points 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. 728 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 CMH to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 728 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 81.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 716 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CMH to DEN, every carrier
- United on DEN to CMH, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on CMH to DEN78.8%
- Frontier Airlines on CMH to DEN71.0%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.