Carrier route record
UADEN→DRO
United Airlines · Denver to Durango
- Flights
- 731
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 33%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on DEN to DRO sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 731 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate United on DEN to DRO from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 727 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.41%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.7%
Every carrier on DEN to DRO, 2,191 flights
These figures cover 731 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on DEN to DRO
United flew 731 of the 2,191 flights on DEN to DRO, about 33% of it. Its 75.1% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 82.0% to United at 75.1%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,460 | 82.0% | 73 min | 1.51% | B |
| United Airlines (this page) | 731 | 75.1% | 59 min | 0.41% | B+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DEN to DRO
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 31 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm365 flights83.7%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm324 flights68.3%
- 8pm–5am42 flights52.4%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 52.4% on time, against 83.7% for the 11am–2pm 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 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DEN to DRO through the year
July is the worst month at 60.0% on time, 25 points below April, the best at 85.0%. 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, Monday is the strongest day at 77.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 69.9%. 8 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 57% of the 11,000 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
57% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 57 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 10,584 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.41%, below the national 1.81% 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
7.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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.
At 251 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.3% on time across 731 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 731 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 DRO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 731 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 75.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 727 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to DRO, every carrier
- United on DRO to DEN, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to DRO82.0%
- 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 7.04 million flight records
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.