Carrier route record
UADEN→CID
United Airlines · Denver to Cedar Rapids
- Flights
- 728
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 63%
- 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 CID lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 728 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate United on DEN to CID from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 724 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.41%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
79.2%
Every carrier on DEN to CID, 1,155 flights
These figures cover 728 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 DEN to CID
United flew 728 of the 1,155 flights on DEN to CID, most of the route. Its 79.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 79.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 82.7% to SkyWest at 76.9%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 164 | 82.7% | 57 min | 1.22% | B |
| United Airlines (this page) | 728 | 79.3% | 80 min | 0.41% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 263 | 76.9% | 67 min | 1.14% | B |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DEN to CID
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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 10 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am70 flights82.9%
- 11am–2pm294 flights84.6%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm363 flights74.4%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 84.6% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 74.4%. 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 363 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DEN to CID through the year
August is the worst month at 61.3% on time, 30 points below November, the best at 91.4%. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 63 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.8%, a spread of 10 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on DEN to CID runs when it is late
The 150 late arrivals split 43 under half an hour, 54 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 53 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early177 flights24.4%
- Within 15 min397 flights54.8%
- 15–29 min late43 flights5.9%
- 30–59 min late54 flights7.5%
- 1–2 hours late32 flights4.4%
- 2+ hours late21 flights2.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 724 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
19 of 135 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. 34 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on DEN to CID
The latest arrival of the period was on 28 December 2025, 14 hours 25 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. The five worst days are spread across December, March and June, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 28 December 2025 | 14 hours 25 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 27 December 2025 | 13 hours 17 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 6 March 2026 | 5 hours 54 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 March 2026 | 5 hours 14 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 7 June 2026 | 5 hours 6 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 12,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
50% 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 5 to one. The split is drawn from 11,933 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.41%, 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
7.3% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 692 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 78.1% on time across 728 flights, within about a point 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. 728 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 CID
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 728 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 79.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 724 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to CID, every carrier
- United on CID to DEN, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to CID82.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to CID76.9%
- 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.