Carrier route record
UADEN→DTW
United Airlines · Denver to Detroit
- Flights
- 727
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 24%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on DEN to DTW lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 727 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,252 at 86.2% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 86.2% on time across 1,252 flights.
Key figures
On time
79.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 725 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.6%
Every carrier on DEN to DTW, 3,088 flights
These figures cover 727 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on DEN to DTW
United flew 727 of the 3,088 flights on DEN to DTW, about 24% of it. Its 79.7% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 100.0% to Southwest at 56.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 86.2% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 56.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 649 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,252 | 86.2% | 75 min | 0.48% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 459 | 80.3% | 76 min | 0.22% | B+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 727 | 79.7% | 60 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 649 | 56.7% | 49 min | 1.08% | D |
The spread between Delta and Southwest is 30 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 30 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DEN to DTW
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 17 points, against 30 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am363 flights88.4%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm364 flights71.2%
- 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 88.4% of the time, against 71.2% for the evening window. That is 17 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DEN to DTW through the year
July is the worst month at 68.9% on time, 23 points below November, the best at 91.5%. 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, Saturday is the strongest day at 85.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.8%. 11 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 51% of the 8,782 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.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
51% 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 8,782 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 39 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 8,782 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 88.4% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% 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
6.5% 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.
The 1,123 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.7% on time across 727 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
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 DTW
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 79.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 725 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to DTW, every carrier
- United on DTW to DEN, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on DEN to DTW86.2%
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to DTW80.3%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to DTW56.7%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.