Carrier route record
UADEN→IND
United Airlines · Denver to Indianapolis
- Flights
- 841
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 33%
- 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 IND lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly 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 841 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's DEN to IND record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 40 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 835 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.36%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.5%
Every carrier on DEN to IND, 2,544 flights
These figures cover 841 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 IND
United flew 841 of the 2,544 flights on DEN to IND, about 33% of it. Its 81.6% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 81.6% to Southwest at 70.6%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 841 | 81.6% | 57 min | 0.36% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 294 | 81.6% | 59 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,409 | 70.6% | 58 min | 0.57% | C+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DEN to IND
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 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–11am365 flights89.3%
- 11am–2pm112 flights87.3%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm364 flights72.0%
- 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 89.3% of the time, against 72.0% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DEN to IND through the year
July is the worst month at 67.4% on time, 26 points below April, the best at 93.3%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 88 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 84.1% on time and Saturday the weakest at 76.0%. 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 53% of the 8,801 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
53% 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 8,801 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 53 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 8,801 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 89.3% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.36%, 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
5.6% 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 976 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 runs 80.6% on time across 841 flights, within about a point 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. 841 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 IND
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 841 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 81.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 835 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to IND, every carrier
- United on IND to DEN, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to IND81.6%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to IND70.6%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Indianapolis International (IND) 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.