Carrier route record
UADEN→MSP
United Airlines · Denver to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 1,457
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 25%
- 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 MSP lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five 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 1,457 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,805 at 81.1% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 81.1% on time across 1,805 flights.
Key figures
On time
79.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,446 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.34%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.6%
Every carrier on DEN to MSP, 5,848 flights
These figures cover 1,457 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% 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 MSP
United flew 1,457 of the 5,848 flights on DEN to MSP, about 25% of it. Its 79.9% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 88.7% to Frontier at 71.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 81.1% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 71.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 618 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 244 | 88.7% | 78 min | 2.46% | A |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,805 | 81.1% | 73 min | 0.89% | B+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,457 | 79.9% | 68 min | 0.34% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,724 | 72.7% | 50 min | 0.58% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 618 | 71.7% | 62 min | 0.49% | C+ |
Delta leads Frontier by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DEN to MSP
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 40 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am141 flights93.6%
- 8am–11am360 flights87.7%
- 11am–2pm248 flights86.5%
- 2pm–5pm230 flights76.9%
- 5pm–8pm364 flights72.6%
- 8pm–5am114 flights53.1%
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 53.1% on time, against 93.6% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DEN to MSP through the year
July is the worst month at 67.1% on time, 25 points below February, the best at 91.6%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 172 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 82.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.8%. 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 52% of the 20,000 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.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
52% 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 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 28 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 19,846 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 93.6% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.34%, 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
8.4% 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.
The 680 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 78.4% on time across 1,459 flights, within 2 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 1,457 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 MSP
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 91.6% on time and July 67.1%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,446 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to MSP, every carrier
- United on MSP to DEN, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to MSP88.7%
- Delta Air Lines on DEN to MSP81.1%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to MSP72.7%
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to MSP71.7%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) 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.