Carrier route record
UADEN→FSD
United Airlines · Denver to Sioux Falls
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 20%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate United on DEN to FSD from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 357 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.10%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
82.8%
Every carrier on DEN to FSD, 1,817 flights
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on DEN to FSD
United flew 365 of the 1,817 flights on DEN to FSD, about 20% of it. Its 75.9% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 82.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 85.5% to Frontier at 74.8%. 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 | 1,313 | 85.5% | 78 min | 0.99% | A+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 365 | 75.9% | 86 min | 1.10% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 139 | 74.8% | 77 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DEN to FSD
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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 365 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 75.9% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
United on DEN to FSD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights79.1%
- Jan–Mar 202692 flights77.5%
- Apr–Jun 202690 flights78.7%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights66.1%
Scale runs 60% 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 75.9% on time across 365 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 2026 at 66.1%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 91 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 64.7%, a spread of 18 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on DEN to FSD runs when it is late
The 86 late arrivals split 24 under half an hour, 27 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 35 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early66 flights18.5%
- Within 15 min205 flights57.4%
- 15–29 min late24 flights6.7%
- 30–59 min late27 flights7.6%
- 1–2 hours late16 flights4.5%
- 2+ hours late19 flights5.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 357 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
14 of 86 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 16% of them. 14 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on DEN to FSD
The latest arrival of the period was on 26 September 2025, 6 hours 47 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 26 September 2025 | 6 hours 47 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 June 2026 | 5 hours 35 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 13 August 2026 | 5 hours 8 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 May 2026 | 5 hours 7 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 July 2026 | 4 hours 49 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 63% of the 7,349 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 63%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
63% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,349 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 49 to one. The split is drawn from 7,349 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.10%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
9.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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 runs 74.3% on time across 366 flights, within 2 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. 365 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. 365 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 75.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 357 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 FSD85.5%
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to FSD74.8%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.