Carrier route record
UADEN→CMH
United Airlines · Denver to Columbus
- Flights
- 728
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 41%
- 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 CMH lands a B+, 6 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 about an hour on average. That rests on 728 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's DEN to CMH record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 58 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 720 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.69%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
72.9%
Every carrier on DEN to CMH, 1,776 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 CMH
United flew 728 of the 1,776 flights on DEN to CMH, about 41% of it. Its 83.1% on time is 10 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 83.1% to Southwest at 63.9%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 728 | 83.1% | 65 min | 0.69% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 125 | 80.8% | 91 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 923 | 63.9% | 53 min | 0.87% | D+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DEN to CMH
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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 14 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am365 flights90.1%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm363 flights75.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.1% of the time, against 75.9% for the evening window. That is 14 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DEN to CMH through the year
August is the worst month at 68.9% on time, 24 points below April, the best at 93.3%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.5% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 77.9%, a spread of 11 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on DEN to CMH runs when it is late
United on DEN to CMH often beats the schedule: 196 of 720 completed flights, 27%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 122 late arrivals split 38 under half an hour, 40 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 44 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early196 flights27.2%
- Within 15 min402 flights55.8%
- 15–29 min late38 flights5.3%
- 30–59 min late40 flights5.6%
- 1–2 hours late27 flights3.8%
- 2+ hours late17 flights2.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 720 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
29 of 117 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 25% of them. 34 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on DEN to CMH
The latest arrival of the period was on 6 March 2026, 5 hours 15 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 6 March 2026 | 5 hours 15 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 11 September 2025 | 4 hours 26 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 July 2026 | 4 hours 7 minutes | Carrier |
| 8 August 2026 | 4 hours 4 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 August 2026 | 4 hours | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 7,981 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,981 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 51 to one. The split is drawn from 7,981 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 90.1% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.69%, 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
6.1% 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.
The 1,154 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 81.6% on time across 728 flights, within 2 points 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 CMH
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 83.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 720 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to CMH, every carrier
- United on CMH to DEN, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to CMH80.8%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to CMH63.9%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) 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.