Carrier route record
UADEN→SBA
United Airlines · Denver to Santa Barbara
- Flights
- 771
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 73%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on DEN to SBA sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 771 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate United on DEN to SBA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 766 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.26%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
72.4%
Every carrier on DEN to SBA, 1,058 flights
These figures cover 771 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 2 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 SBA
United flew 771 of the 1,058 flights on DEN to SBA, most of the route. Its 75.6% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 75.6% to Southwest at 63.7%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 771 | 75.6% | 59 min | 0.26% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 287 | 63.7% | 58 min | 0.70% | D+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DEN to SBA
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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 24 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm373 flights82.2%
- 2pm–5pm35 flights91.4%
- 5pm–8pm344 flights67.1%
- 8pm–5am19 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 91.4% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 67.1%. 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 373 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DEN to SBA through the year
July is the worst month at 58.3% on time, 33 points below February, the best at 91.1%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 83 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 71.9%, a spread of 9 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on DEN to SBA runs when it is late
The 187 late arrivals split 73 under half an hour, 56 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 58 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early135 flights17.6%
- Within 15 min444 flights58.0%
- 15–29 min late73 flights9.5%
- 30–59 min late56 flights7.3%
- 1–2 hours late33 flights4.3%
- 2+ hours late25 flights3.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 766 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
35 of 175 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 20% of them. In the other direction, 47 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 SBA.
The worst days
Worst days for United on DEN to SBA
The latest arrival of the period was on 3 August 2026, 5 hours 41 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 3 August 2026 | 5 hours 41 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 June 2026 | 4 hours 21 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 August 2026 | 4 hours 13 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 November 2025 | 3 hours 50 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 April 2026 | 3 hours 50 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 14%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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 38 to one. The split is drawn from 11,045 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.26%, 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
7.6% 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 916 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 85.5% on time across 771 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 771 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 SBA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 771 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 75.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 766 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to SBA, every carrier
- United on SBA to DEN, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to SBA63.7%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) 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.