Carrier route record
UADEN→TPA
United Airlines · Denver to Tampa
- Flights
- 1,186
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 38%
- 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 TPA lands a B+, 4 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,186 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 603 at 81.6% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate United on DEN to TPA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
81.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,179 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.17%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.6%
Every carrier on DEN to TPA, 3,098 flights
These figures cover 1,186 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 TPA
United flew 1,186 of the 3,098 flights on DEN to TPA, about 38% of it. Its 81.4% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 81.6% to Southwest at 70.0%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Frontier Airlines arrives on time 81.6% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 70.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,309 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlines | 603 | 81.6% | 72 min | 0.83% | B+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,186 | 81.4% | 67 min | 0.17% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,309 | 70.0% | 58 min | 0.23% | C+ |
Frontier leads Southwest by 12 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 TPA
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 15 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am39 flights81.6%
- 8am–11am383 flights87.4%
- 11am–2pm52 flights82.7%
- 2pm–5pm268 flights85.3%
- 5pm–8pm358 flights72.3%
- 8pm–5am86 flights80.2%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 87.4% of the time, against 72.3% for the evening window. That is 15 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 383 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DEN to TPA through the year
July is the worst month at 58.1% on time, 37 points below November, the best at 95.5%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 138 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.6% on time and Saturday the weakest at 77.9%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 15,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
41% 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 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 21 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 14,565 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 87.4% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.17%, 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
7.2% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,506 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 84.5% on time across 1,186 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,186 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 TPA
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 95.5% on time and July 58.1%, a swing of 37 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,179 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to TPA, every carrier
- United on TPA to DEN, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on DEN to TPA81.6%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to TPA70.0%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.