Carrier route record
UADEN→MEM
United Airlines · Denver to Memphis
- Flights
- 727
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 52%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on DEN to MEM lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. 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 rests on 727 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's DEN to MEM record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 56 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 720 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.83%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
76.4%
Every carrier on DEN to MEM, 1,395 flights
These figures cover 727 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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.
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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on DEN to MEM
United flew 727 of the 1,395 flights on DEN to MEM, most of the route. Its 82.9% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 100.0% to Southwest at 64.9%. Two 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 Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 145 | 84.7% | 57 min | 0.69% | B+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 727 | 82.9% | 73 min | 0.83% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 522 | 64.9% | 60 min | 1.15% | D |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DEN to MEM
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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 15 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am50 flights90.0%
- 11am–2pm315 flights90.4%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm362 flights75.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 90.4% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 75.5%. 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 362 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DEN to MEM through the year
June is the worst month at 68.3% on time, 30 points below November, the best at 98.3%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 74.0%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on DEN to MEM runs when it is late
United on DEN to MEM often beats the schedule: 201 of 720 completed flights, 28%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 123 late arrivals split 45 under half an hour, 32 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 46 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early201 flights27.9%
- Within 15 min396 flights55.0%
- 15–29 min late45 flights6.3%
- 30–59 min late32 flights4.4%
- 1–2 hours late24 flights3.3%
- 2+ hours late22 flights3.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 720 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
27 of 128 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 21% of them. 22 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on DEN to MEM
The latest arrival of the period was on 3 June 2026, 12 hours 52 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 3 June 2026 | 12 hours 52 minutes | Carrier |
| 8 June 2026 | 6 hours 28 minutes | Carrier |
| 3 August 2026 | 4 hours 55 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 13 August 2026 | 4 hours 48 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 22 July 2026 | 4 hours 35 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 8,950 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,950 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 52 to one. The split is drawn from 8,950 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.83%, below the national 1.89% 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
6.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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.
The 872 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.
The return leg runs 81.6% on time across 727 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. 727 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 MEM
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 727 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 82.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 720 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to MEM, every carrier
- United on MEM to DEN, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to MEM84.7%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to MEM64.9%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Memphis International (MEM) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.