Carrier route record
UADEN→HDN
United Airlines · Denver to Hayden
- Flights
- 732
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 51%
- 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 HDN sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. 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 a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 732 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate United on DEN to HDN from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 727 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.55%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.1%
Every carrier on DEN to HDN, 1,427 flights
These figures cover 732 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.1% 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 HDN
United flew 732 of the 1,427 flights on DEN to HDN, most of the route. Its 74.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 74.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 74.6% to SkyWest at 72.9%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 431 | 74.6% | 60 min | 0.23% | C+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 732 | 74.3% | 78 min | 0.55% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 264 | 72.9% | 72 min | 0.38% | C+ |
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 732 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm505 flights77.2%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm227 flights67.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 77.2% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 67.7%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 505 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DEN to HDN through the year
June is the worst month at 51.7% on time, 40 points below October, the best at 91.4%. 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 93 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.3% on time and Thursday the weakest at 65.1%. 21 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 15,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 18%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 18% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 14,516 reported delay minutes.
38% 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 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 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.
Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, 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. 9.1% 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 141 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 79.4% on time across 731 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 732 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 HDN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 732 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 74.3% 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 HDN, every carrier
- United on HDN to DEN, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to HDN74.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to HDN72.9%
- 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.