Carrier route record
UADFW→DEN
United Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Denver
- Flights
- 1,901
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 32%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on DFW to DEN 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 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,901 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 1,126 at 77.7% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate United on DFW to DEN from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,868 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.21%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.4%
Every carrier on DFW to DEN, 6,025 flights
These figures cover 1,901 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% 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 DFW to DEN
United flew 1,901 of the 6,025 flights on DFW to DEN, about 32% of it. Its 75.7% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 69.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 91.3% to American at 61.7%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Frontier Airlines arrives on time 77.7% of the time; American Airlines manages 61.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,951 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 23 | 91.3% | 213 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 24 | 87.5% | 56 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,126 | 77.7% | 84 min | 1.42% | B |
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,901 | 75.7% | 78 min | 1.21% | B |
| American Airlines | 2,951 | 61.7% | 71 min | 3.42% | D− |
American Airlines cancels 3.4% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DFW to DEN
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 33 points, against 16 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am185 flights94.5%
- 8am–11am294 flights75.7%
- 11am–2pm636 flights82.6%
- 2pm–5pm256 flights61.6%
- 5pm–8pm421 flights66.3%
- 8pm–5am109 flights73.3%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.5% of the time, against 61.6% for the afternoon window. That is 33 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 636 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DFW to DEN through the year
July is the worst month at 64.7% on time, 16 points below February, the best at 81.1%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 193 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 72.1%. 6 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 43% of the 35,000 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 20%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
43% 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 35,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 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 35,445 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 12,000 minutes out of 35,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.21% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.53%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 641 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 77.2% on time across 1,902 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,901 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 DFW to DEN
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 81.1% on time and July 64.7%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,868 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to DEN, every carrier
- United on DEN to DFW, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to DEN77.7%
- American Airlines on DFW to DEN61.7%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- 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.