Carrier route record
UADEN→CVG
United Airlines · Denver to Cincinnati
- Flights
- 727
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 49%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on DEN to CVG earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 727 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's DEN to CVG record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 71 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 724 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.41%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
79.8%
Every carrier on DEN to CVG, 1,496 flights
These figures cover 727 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 CVG
United flew 727 of the 1,496 flights on DEN to CVG, about 49% of it. Its 84.4% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.4% to Allegiant at 69.2%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 727 | 84.4% | 60 min | 0.41% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 379 | 80.9% | 60 min | 0.79% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 364 | 70.2% | 45 min | 1.37% | C |
| Allegiant Airthin sample | 26 | 69.2% | 71 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DEN to CVG
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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 18 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am364 flights93.4%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm363 flights75.3%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 93.4% of the time, against 75.3% for the evening window. That is 18 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 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DEN to CVG through the year
July is the worst month at 73.8% on time, 23 points below October, the best at 96.8%. 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, Thursday is the strongest day at 88.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.6%, a spread of 9 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on DEN to CVG runs when it is late
United on DEN to CVG often beats the schedule: 212 of 724 completed flights, 29%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 113 late arrivals split 45 under half an hour, 36 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 32 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early212 flights29.3%
- Within 15 min399 flights55.1%
- 15–29 min late45 flights6.2%
- 30–59 min late36 flights5.0%
- 1–2 hours late21 flights2.9%
- 2+ hours late11 flights1.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 724 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
19 of 102 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 19% of them. 30 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on DEN to CVG
The latest arrival of the period was on 14 August 2026, 7 hours 11 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 14 August 2026 | 7 hours 11 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 December 2025 | 6 hours 12 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 10 July 2026 | 5 hours 26 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 July 2026 | 3 hours 36 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 February 2026 | 3 hours 20 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 6,803 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 6,803 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 to one. The split is drawn from 6,803 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 93.4% on time here.
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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.4% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 1,069 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 87.2% on time across 727 flights, within 3 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. 727 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 CVG
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 727 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 84.4% 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 CVG, every carrier
- United on CVG to DEN, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to CVG80.9%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to CVG70.2%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) 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.