Carrier route record
UADEN→ABQ
United Airlines · Denver to Albuquerque
- Flights
- 845
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 26%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on DEN to ABQ lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 845 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 908 at 84.4% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
76.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 838 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.47%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
78.3%
Every carrier on DEN to ABQ, 3,218 flights
These figures cover 845 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on DEN to ABQ
United flew 845 of the 3,218 flights on DEN to ABQ, about 26% of it. Its 76.8% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 84.4% to Southwest at 75.4%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 84.4% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 75.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,465 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 908 | 84.4% | 67 min | 0.44% | B+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 845 | 76.8% | 63 min | 0.47% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,465 | 75.4% | 57 min | 0.41% | B+ |
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
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 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 845 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am21 flights—
- 11am–2pm365 flights79.9%
- 2pm–5pm95 flights76.6%
- 5pm–8pm261 flights70.4%
- 8pm–5am103 flights79.6%
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 79.9% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 70.4%. 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 60.9% on time, 29 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 83.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 72.6%, a spread of 11 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on DEN to ABQ runs when it is late
The 194 late arrivals split 59 under half an hour, 64 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 71 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early103 flights12.3%
- Within 15 min541 flights64.6%
- 15–29 min late59 flights7.0%
- 30–59 min late64 flights7.6%
- 1–2 hours late45 flights5.4%
- 2+ hours late26 flights3.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 838 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
24 of 182 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 13% of them. 36 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on DEN to ABQ
The latest arrival of the period was on 19 December 2025, 5 hours 3 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 19 December 2025 | 5 hours 3 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 15 March 2026 | 4 hours 26 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 August 2026 | 4 hours 16 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 December 2025 | 4 hours 12 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 March 2026 | 3 hours 59 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 58% of the 12,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 13%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. Across 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 58 to one. The split is drawn from 12,234 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.47%, 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
8.5% 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 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 83.0% on time across 845 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 845 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. 845 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 76.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 838 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 ABQ84.4%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to ABQ75.4%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.