Carrier route record
UADEN→TUL
United Airlines · Denver to Tulsa
- Flights
- 367
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 15%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on DEN to TUL lands a B+, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 367 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 1,129 at 85.4% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate United on DEN to TUL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 364 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.82%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.1%
Every carrier on DEN to TUL, 2,432 flights
These figures cover 367 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on DEN to TUL
United flew 367 of the 2,432 flights on DEN to TUL, about 15% of it. Its 76.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 76.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 85.4% to Southwest at 64.1%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 85.4% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 64.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 893 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,129 | 85.4% | 69 min | 0.62% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 43 | 76.7% | 74 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 367 | 76.6% | 75 min | 0.82% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 893 | 64.1% | 53 min | 1.01% | D |
The spread between SkyWest and Southwest is 21 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 21 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DEN to TUL
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 367 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split United's DEN to TUL record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 76.6% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
United on DEN to TUL through the year
July is the worst month at 45.2% on time, 55 points below November, the best at 100.0%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 32 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 86.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 66.0%. 21 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 61% of the 6,332 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.
- 61%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
61% 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 6,332 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 44 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 6,332 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, 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
8.5% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 541 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 75.7% on time across 366 flights, within about 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. 367 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 TUL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 367 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 76.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 364 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to TUL, every carrier
- United on TUL to DEN, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to TUL85.4%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to TUL64.1%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) 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.