Carrier route record
UADEN→LAX
United Airlines · Denver to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 3,064
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 40%
- 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 LAX earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 3,064 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 762 at 81.1% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, United's DEN to LAX record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 69 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,063 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.0%
Every carrier on DEN to LAX, 7,721 flights
These figures cover 3,064 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 LAX
United flew 3,064 of the 7,721 flights on DEN to LAX, about 40% of it. Its 84.5% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.5% to Southwest at 68.0%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Frontier Airlines arrives on time 81.1% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 68.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,918 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 3,064 | 84.5% | 58 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 762 | 81.1% | 75 min | 0.52% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 746 | 80.5% | 89 min | 1.47% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,231 | 80.1% | 82 min | 0.81% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,918 | 68.0% | 49 min | 0.73% | C+ |
The spread between Frontier and Southwest is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DEN to LAX
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 19 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am249 flights95.2%
- 8am–11am657 flights91.2%
- 11am–2pm693 flights87.3%
- 2pm–5pm401 flights82.8%
- 5pm–8pm604 flights76.3%
- 8pm–5am460 flights77.4%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 95.2% of the time, against 76.3% for the evening window. That is 19 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 693 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DEN to LAX through the year
June is the worst month at 74.4% on time, 18 points below April, the best at 92.0%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 277 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 87.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 81.9%. 6 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 45% of the 27,000 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.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
45% 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 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 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 27,460 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 95.2% 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.6% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 862 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 87.1% on time across 3,067 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 3,064 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking United on DEN to LAX
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 92.0% on time and June 74.4%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 3,063 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to LAX, every carrier
- United on LAX to DEN, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to LAX81.1%
- Delta Air Lines on DEN to LAX80.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to LAX80.1%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to LAX68.0%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) 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.