Carrier route record
UADEN→SJC
United Airlines · Denver to San Jose
- Flights
- 990
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 39%
- 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 SJC lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 990 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's DEN to SJC record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 43 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 990 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
73.5%
Every carrier on DEN to SJC, 2,547 flights
These figures cover 990 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 SJC
United flew 990 of the 2,547 flights on DEN to SJC, about 39% of it. Its 81.6% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 81.6% to Southwest at 68.0%. 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) | 990 | 81.6% | 63 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 34 | 79.4% | 29 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,523 | 68.0% | 51 min | 0.72% | C+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DEN to SJC
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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 20 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am93 flights93.5%
- 11am–2pm365 flights86.0%
- 2pm–5pm169 flights81.1%
- 5pm–8pm342 flights73.7%
- 8pm–5am21 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 93.5% of the time, against 73.7% for the evening window. That is 20 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DEN to SJC through the year
July is the worst month at 56.6% on time, 36 points below October, the best at 92.2%. 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 115 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 85.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.4%, a spread of 7 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on DEN to SJC runs when it is late
United on DEN to SJC often beats the schedule: 274 of 990 completed flights, 28%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 182 late arrivals split 54 under half an hour, 63 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 65 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early274 flights27.7%
- Within 15 min534 flights53.9%
- 15–29 min late54 flights5.5%
- 30–59 min late63 flights6.4%
- 1–2 hours late46 flights4.6%
- 2+ hours late19 flights1.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 990 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 201 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 61 still arrived on time. 42 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on DEN to SJC
The latest arrival of the period was on 17 February 2026, 10 hours 55 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in August 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 17 February 2026 | 10 hours 55 minutes | Carrier |
| 3 August 2026 | 4 hours 35 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 August 2026 | 4 hours 14 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 March 2026 | 4 hours 3 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 August 2026 | 3 hours 57 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 57% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
57% 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 57 to one. The split is drawn from 11,479 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 93.5% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% 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
6.6% 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 948 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 89.3% on time across 992 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 990 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 SJC
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 990 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 81.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 990 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to SJC, every carrier
- United on SJC to DEN, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to SJC68.0%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International (SJC) 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.