Carrier route record
UADRO→DEN
United Airlines · Durango to Denver
- Flights
- 731
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 33%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on DRO to DEN lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six 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 731 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's DRO to DEN record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 57 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 725 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.55%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.2%
Every carrier on DRO to DEN, 2,192 flights
These figures cover 731 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 DRO to DEN
United flew 731 of the 2,192 flights on DRO to DEN, about 33% of it. Its 83.3% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 83.3% to SkyWest at 80.1%.
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) | 731 | 83.3% | 70 min | 0.55% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,461 | 80.1% | 94 min | 1.57% | B |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DRO to DEN
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 731 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights85.9%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm364 flights80.9%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 80.9% on time against 85.9% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DRO to DEN through the year
July is the worst month at 58.3% on time, 34 points below March, the best at 91.8%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.8%. 6 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 8,459 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Carrier
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 85.9% on time here. The split is drawn from 8,459 reported delay minutes.
No single cause dominates. carrier at 34%, late-arriving aircraft at 32% and national airspace system at 26% split the 8,459 reported delay minutes between them. An even spread like this usually means the operation is running close to its designed capacity with no one obvious weak point, and it is the hardest pattern for a traveller to route around.
Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 251 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.1% on time across 731 flights, 8 points below 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. 731 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 DRO to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 731 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 83.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 725 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.