Carrier route record
UADEN→ABQ
United Airlines · Denver to Albuquerque
- Flights
- 817
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 26%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on DEN to ABQ lands a B+, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 817 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 895 at 83.5% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate United on DEN to ABQ from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 812 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.37%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.4%
Every carrier on DEN to ABQ, 3,176 flights
These figures cover 817 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.7% 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 DEN to ABQ
United flew 817 of the 3,176 flights on DEN to ABQ, about 26% of it. Its 76.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 77.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 83.5% to Southwest at 74.1%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 83.5% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 74.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,464 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 895 | 83.5% | 62 min | 0.78% | B+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 817 | 76.7% | 63 min | 0.37% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,464 | 74.1% | 54 min | 0.41% | C+ |
SkyWest leads Southwest by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DEN to ABQ
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 12 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am21 flights—
- 11am–2pm365 flights80.7%
- 2pm–5pm67 flights75.8%
- 5pm–8pm201 flights74.5%
- 8pm–5am163 flights69.1%
Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 80.7% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 69.1%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DEN to ABQ through the year
August is the worst month at 64.5% on time, 25 points below November, the best at 89.8%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 85 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 71.4%. 13 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 58% of the 12,000 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.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
58% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 58 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 11,946 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.37%, 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
8.7% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 349 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.5% on time across 817 flights, 7 points above 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 817 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 DEN to ABQ
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 817 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 76.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 812 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to ABQ, every carrier
- United on ABQ to DEN, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to ABQ83.5%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to ABQ74.1%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- 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.