Carrier route record
UADEN→BZN
United Airlines · Denver to Bozeman
- Flights
- 1,163
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 43%
- 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 BZN lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six 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 1,163 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 393 at 88.4% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, United's DEN to BZN record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 47 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,161 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.09%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.1%
Every carrier on DEN to BZN, 2,729 flights
These figures cover 1,163 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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 DEN to BZN
United flew 1,163 of the 2,729 flights on DEN to BZN, about 43% of it. Its 82.3% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 88.4% to Southwest at 70.5%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 88.4% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 70.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,173 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 393 | 88.4% | 59 min | 1.02% | A |
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,163 | 82.3% | 61 min | 0.09% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,173 | 70.5% | 51 min | 0.43% | C+ |
The spread between SkyWest and Southwest is 18 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 18 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DEN to BZN
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 20 points, against 18 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am74 flights91.9%
- 8am–11am56 flights96.4%
- 11am–2pm669 flights82.6%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm293 flights76.0%
- 8pm–5am71 flights83.1%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 96.4% of the time, against 76.0% for the evening window. That is 20 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 669 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DEN to BZN through the year
July is the worst month at 63.6% on time, 31 points below April, the best at 95.0%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 86.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.0%. 8 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 51% of the 13,000 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.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
51% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 12,574 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 96.4% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.09%, 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
6.5% 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.
The 524 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 78.8% on time across 1,163 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,163 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking United on DEN to BZN
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 95.0% on time and July 63.6%, a swing of 31 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,161 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to BZN, every carrier
- United on BZN to DEN, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to BZN88.4%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to BZN70.5%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.