Carrier route record
UADEN→RDU
United Airlines · Denver to Raleigh
- Flights
- 727
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 42%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on DEN to RDU lands a B+, 5 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 about an hour on average. That rests on 727 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's DEN to RDU record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 50 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 722 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.41%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
76.0%
Every carrier on DEN to RDU, 1,732 flights
These figures cover 727 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on DEN to RDU
United flew 727 of the 1,732 flights on DEN to RDU, about 42% of it. Its 82.3% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 87.4% to Southwest at 64.8%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 296 | 87.4% | 56 min | 1.01% | A |
| United Airlines (this page) | 727 | 82.3% | 66 min | 0.41% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 709 | 64.8% | 52 min | 0.85% | D+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DEN to RDU
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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 12 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am364 flights88.4%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm8 flights—
- 5pm–8pm355 flights76.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 88.4% of the time, against 76.2% for the evening window. That is 12 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 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DEN to RDU through the year
July is the worst month at 71.7% on time, 20 points below April, the best at 91.7%. 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 89.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 76.7%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on DEN to RDU runs when it is late
United on DEN to RDU often beats the schedule: 189 of 722 completed flights, 26%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 128 late arrivals split 52 under half an hour, 31 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 45 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early189 flights26.2%
- Within 15 min405 flights56.1%
- 15–29 min late52 flights7.2%
- 30–59 min late31 flights4.3%
- 1–2 hours late21 flights2.9%
- 2+ hours late24 flights3.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 722 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
28 of 116 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 24% of them. In the other direction, 40 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at RDU.
The worst days
Worst days for United on DEN to RDU
The latest arrival of the period was on 19 December 2025, 5 hours 40 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 19 December 2025 | 5 hours 40 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 July 2026 | 5 hours 2 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 February 2026 | 4 hours 51 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 15 August 2026 | 4 hours 35 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 April 2026 | 3 hours 38 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 8,501 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
51% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,501 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 51 to one. The split is drawn from 8,501 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 88.4% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.41%, 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
6.2% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,436 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 87.7% on time across 727 flights, 5 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 5 points of difference.
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 RDU
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 82.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 722 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to RDU, every carrier
- United on RDU to DEN, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to RDU87.4%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to RDU64.8%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) 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.