Carrier route record
UADEN→CLE
United Airlines · Denver to Cleveland
- Flights
- 939
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 51%
- 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 CLE lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 939 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's DEN to CLE record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 50 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 938 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
75.9%
Every carrier on DEN to CLE, 1,847 flights
These figures cover 939 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 CLE
United flew 939 of the 1,847 flights on DEN to CLE, most of the route. Its 82.3% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 85.3% to Southwest at 61.4%. One 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 | 298 | 85.3% | 62 min | 1.01% | A |
| United Airlines (this page) | 939 | 82.3% | 70 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 610 | 61.4% | 53 min | 0.49% | D+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DEN to CLE
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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 21 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am356 flights90.1%
- 11am–2pm66 flights92.4%
- 2pm–5pm154 flights86.4%
- 5pm–8pm363 flights71.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 92.4% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 71.1%. 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 363 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DEN to CLE through the year
August is the worst month at 70.0% on time, 19 points below November, the best at 89.2%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 85.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 79.3%, a spread of 6 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on DEN to CLE runs when it is late
United on DEN to CLE often beats the schedule: 273 of 938 completed flights, 29%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 166 late arrivals split 57 under half an hour, 53 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 56 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early273 flights29.1%
- Within 15 min499 flights53.2%
- 15–29 min late57 flights6.1%
- 30–59 min late53 flights5.7%
- 1–2 hours late33 flights3.5%
- 2+ hours late23 flights2.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 938 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
37 of 178 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 21% of them. 25 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on DEN to CLE
The latest arrival of the period was on 27 July 2026, 9 hours 27 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. On four of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 27 July 2026 | 9 hours 27 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 14 August 2026 | 6 hours 46 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 August 2026 | 4 hours 59 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 December 2025 | 4 hours 53 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 29 December 2025 | 4 hours 39 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 60% of the 12,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 60%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
60% 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 49 to one. The split is drawn from 11,661 reported delay minutes.
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
6.0% 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 1,201 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 87.5% on time across 940 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 939 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 CLE
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 939 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 82.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 938 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to CLE, every carrier
- United on CLE to DEN, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to CLE85.3%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to CLE61.4%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) 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.