Carrier route record
UADEN→MCO
United Airlines · Denver to Orlando
- Flights
- 1,762
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 38%
- 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 MCO lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,762 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 850 at 74.7% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, United's DEN to MCO record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 46 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,745 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.40%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.1%
Every carrier on DEN to MCO, 4,583 flights
These figures cover 1,762 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 MCO
United flew 1,762 of the 4,583 flights on DEN to MCO, about 38% of it. Its 82.2% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 82.2% to Southwest at 73.7%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,762 | 82.2% | 76 min | 0.40% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 850 | 74.7% | 67 min | 1.06% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,971 | 73.7% | 50 min | 0.66% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. Frontier tops the table at 74.7%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DEN to MCO
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 21 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am110 flights90.8%
- 8am–11am704 flights86.8%
- 11am–2pm62 flights71.0%
- 2pm–5pm353 flights73.9%
- 5pm–8pm364 flights76.2%
- 8pm–5am169 flights91.7%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 71.0% on time against 91.7% for 8pm–5am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 704 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DEN to MCO through the year
August is the worst month at 71.2% on time, 22 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. March was the busiest month here, with 180 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 85.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 78.6%. 7 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 46% of the 24,000 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.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 25%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
46% 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 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 46 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 23,577 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.40%, 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
6.9% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,547 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg runs 85.0% on time across 1,758 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 1,762 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 MCO
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 93.3% on time and August 71.2%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,745 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to MCO, every carrier
- United on MCO to DEN, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to MCO74.7%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to MCO73.7%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) 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.