Carrier route record
UADEN→RSW
United Airlines · Denver to Fort Myers
- Flights
- 759
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 67%
- 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 RSW earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 759 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's DEN to RSW record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 77 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 757 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.8%
Every carrier on DEN to RSW, 1,132 flights
These figures cover 759 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 RSW
United flew 759 of the 1,132 flights on DEN to RSW, most of the route. Its 85.3% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 85.3% to Southwest at 66.8%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 759 | 85.3% | 56 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 58 | 77.2% | 58 min | 1.72% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 315 | 66.8% | 62 min | 0.32% | C+ |
Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 759 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am364 flights88.2%
- 11am–2pm19 flights—
- 2pm–5pm275 flights83.6%
- 5pm–8pm76 flights81.6%
- 8pm–5am25 flights—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 88.2% on time for the 8am–11am window against 81.6% for 5pm–8pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DEN to RSW through the year
May is the best month on the calendar at 93.3% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 98 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.4%. 8 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 6,155 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
- 34%National Airspace System
- 19%Carrier
- 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 6,155 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 23 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 6,155 reported delay minutes.
34% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 2,080 minutes out of 6,155, against a national NAS share of 21%.
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 4.1% 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.
At 1,607 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 85.8% on time across 760 flights, within half 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. 759 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 RSW
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 759 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 85.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 757 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to RSW, every carrier
- United on RSW to DEN, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to RSW66.8%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Southwest Florida International (RSW) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.