Carrier route record
UADEN→ANC
United Airlines · Denver to Anchorage
- Flights
- 615
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 72%
- 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 ANC lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average. That rests on 615 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate United on DEN to ANC from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 615 completed flights
Avg delay
46 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
74.1%
Every carrier on DEN to ANC, 852 flights
These figures cover 615 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on DEN to ANC
United flew 615 of the 852 flights on DEN to ANC, most of the route. Its 77.6% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 88.0% to Southwest at 38.5%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 128 | 88.0% | 38 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 615 | 77.6% | 46 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 109 | 38.5% | 60 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DEN to ANC
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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 23 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am72 flights90.3%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm111 flights84.7%
- 2pm–5pm105 flights68.6%
- 5pm–8pm260 flights77.3%
- 8pm–5am67 flights67.2%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.3% of the time, against 67.2% for the overnight window. That is 23 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 260 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DEN to ANC through the year
December is the weak month at 57.8% on time, against 97.3% in September. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.2%, a spread of 9 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on DEN to ANC runs when it is late
The 138 late arrivals split 65 under half an hour, 49 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 24 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early138 flights22.4%
- Within 15 min339 flights55.1%
- 15–29 min late65 flights10.6%
- 30–59 min late49 flights8.0%
- 1–2 hours late15 flights2.4%
- 2+ hours late9 flights1.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 615 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
20 of 105 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 19% of them. In the other direction, 53 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 ANC.
The worst days
Worst days for United on DEN to ANC
The latest arrival of the period was on 23 May 2026, 4 hours 37 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 23 May 2026 | 4 hours 37 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 August 2026 | 4 hours 3 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 December 2025 | 3 hours 26 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 August 2026 | 3 hours 11 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 15 March 2026 | 2 hours 11 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 6,393 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 31%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 6,393 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 37 to one. The split is drawn from 6,393 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 90.3% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are 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 3.9% 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.
At 2,405 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 84.4% on time across 615 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. 615 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 ANC
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 615 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 77.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 615 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to ANC, every carrier
- United on ANC to DEN, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on DEN to ANC88.0%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to ANC38.5%
- 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 7.05 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.