Carrier route record
UACVG→DEN
United Airlines · Cincinnati to Denver
- Flights
- 728
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 48%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on CVG 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 728 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's CVG to DEN record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 82 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 716 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.69%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.6%
Every carrier on CVG to DEN, 1,521 flights
These figures cover 728 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 CVG to DEN
United flew 728 of the 1,521 flights on CVG to DEN, about 48% of it. Its 85.8% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 85.8% to Southwest 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) | 728 | 85.8% | 81 min | 0.69% | A+ |
| Allegiant Airthin sample | 26 | 84.6% | 35 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 403 | 82.1% | 96 min | 1.24% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 364 | 72.3% | 60 min | 1.37% | C |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on CVG 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 728 flights.
- 5am–8am4 flights—
- 8am–11am360 flights87.1%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm364 flights84.2%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8am–11am window is the strongest at 87.1% on time. The full set of windows spans 3 points.
Across the year
United on CVG to DEN through the year
August is the worst month at 77.6% on time, 17 points below November, the best at 94.8%. 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, Sunday is the strongest day at 92.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 78.6%. 14 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. Carrier accounts for 47% of the 8,290 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.
- 47%Carrier
- 32%National Airspace System
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 47%, 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 3,861 of the 8,290 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 8,290 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.69%, 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
5.4% 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 1,069 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 82.7% on time across 728 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
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 CVG 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 85.8% 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
- CVG to DEN, every carrier
- United on DEN to CVG, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on CVG to DEN82.1%
- Southwest Airlines on CVG to DEN72.3%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
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.