Carrier route record
UADEN→COS
United Airlines · Denver to Colorado Springs
- Flights
- 614
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 12%
- 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 COS lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 614 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 3,283 at 76.5% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate United on DEN to COS from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 607 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.98%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.8%
Every carrier on DEN to COS, 5,039 flights
These figures cover 614 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on DEN to COS
United flew 614 of the 5,039 flights on DEN to COS, about 12% of it. Its 77.3% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 77.3% to Southwest at 72.9%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 614 | 77.3% | 69 min | 0.98% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 3,283 | 76.5% | 72 min | 1.89% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,142 | 72.9% | 54 min | 0.44% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 76.5%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm404 flights81.7%
- 2pm–5pm57 flights84.2%
- 5pm–8pm11 flights—
- 8pm–5am142 flights61.4%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.4% on time, against 84.2% for the 2pm–5pm slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 404 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DEN to COS through the year
July is the worst month at 53.4% on time, 34 points below October, the best at 87.1%. 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 62 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 70.8%. 10 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 49% of the 9,517 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
49% 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 9,517 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 9,517 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 0.98% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.16%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 73 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.9% on time across 614 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 614 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 COS
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 614 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 77.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 607 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to COS, every carrier
- United on COS to DEN, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to COS76.5%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to COS72.9%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.