Carrier route record
UACVG→DEN
United Airlines · Cincinnati to Denver
- Flights
- 727
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 49%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on CVG to DEN earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 727 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's CVG to DEN record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 99 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 720 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.55%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
82.7%
Every carrier on CVG to DEN, 1,498 flights
These figures cover 727 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on CVG to DEN
United flew 727 of the 1,498 flights on CVG to DEN, about 49% of it. Its 87.2% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 87.2% to Southwest at 74.2%. 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 | 87.2% | 78 min | 0.55% | A+ |
| Allegiant Airthin sample | 26 | 84.6% | 35 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 381 | 82.0% | 87 min | 0.79% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 364 | 74.2% | 51 min | 1.37% | C |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on CVG to DEN
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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–8am4 flights—
- 8am–11am360 flights87.7%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm363 flights86.6%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 80% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8am–11am window is the strongest at 87.7% on time. The full set of windows spans about a point.
Across the year
United on CVG to DEN through the year
December is the weak month at 79.0% on time, against 94.8% in November. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 96.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 79.4%, a spread of 17 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on CVG to DEN runs when it is late
United on CVG to DEN often beats the schedule: 242 of 720 completed flights, 34%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 92 late arrivals split 35 under half an hour, 22 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 35 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early242 flights33.6%
- Within 15 min386 flights53.6%
- 15–29 min late35 flights4.9%
- 30–59 min late22 flights3.1%
- 1–2 hours late19 flights2.6%
- 2+ hours late16 flights2.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 720 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
23 of 83 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 28% of them. 32 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on CVG to DEN
The latest arrival of the period was on 16 March 2026, 9 hours 20 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 16 March 2026 | 9 hours 20 minutes | Carrier |
| 15 May 2026 | 9 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 December 2025 | 6 hours 2 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 May 2026 | 5 hours 31 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 December 2025 | 5 hours 10 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 47% of the 7,215 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%Carrier
- 31%National Airspace System
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 47%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,377 of the 7,215 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 7,215 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 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.
The return leg runs 84.4% on time across 727 flights, within 3 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. 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 CVG 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 87.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 720 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 DEN82.0%
- Southwest Airlines on CVG to DEN74.2%
- 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
- The best day of the week to fly, and why it is the second lever
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.