Carrier route record
UADEN→FSD
United Airlines · Denver to Sioux Falls
- Flights
- 366
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 20%
- 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 FSD sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 366 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so United on DEN to FSD runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 45 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 360 completed flights
Avg delay
103 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.82%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.6%
Every carrier on DEN to FSD, 1,831 flights
These figures cover 366 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.2% 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 FSD
United flew 366 of the 1,831 flights on DEN to FSD, about 20% of it. Its 73.1% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 81.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 84.7% to United at 73.1%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,307 | 84.7% | 79 min | 1.07% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 158 | 75.3% | 72 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 366 | 73.1% | 103 min | 0.82% | C+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DEN to FSD
Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 366 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split United's DEN to FSD record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 73.1% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
United on DEN to FSD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202593 flights57.1%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights79.1%
- Jan–Mar 202692 flights77.5%
- Apr–Jun 202690 flights78.7%
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 73.1% on time across 366 flights.
United on DEN to FSD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 79.1% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 57.1%, a swing of 22 points on roughly 92 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 82.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 58.8%. 24 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 60% of the 9,957 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.
- 60%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
60% 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 9,957 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 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 9,957 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.2% 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 483 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 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 69.7% on time across 366 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 366 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 FSD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 366 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 73.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 360 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to FSD, every carrier
- United on FSD to DEN, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to FSD84.7%
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to FSD75.3%
- 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.