Carrier route record
UADSM→DEN
United Airlines · Des Moines to Denver
- Flights
- 681
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 29%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on DSM to DEN sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 681 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 936 at 90.0% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate United on DSM 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
74.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 674 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.59%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
83.0%
Every carrier on DSM to DEN, 2,329 flights
These figures cover 681 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.0% 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 DSM to DEN
United flew 681 of the 2,329 flights on DSM to DEN, about 29% of it. Its 74.2% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 83.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 90.0% to United at 74.2%. 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 90.0% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 83.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 559 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 936 | 90.0% | 101 min | 0.75% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 559 | 83.4% | 72 min | 0.54% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 153 | 77.8% | 102 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 681 | 74.2% | 77 min | 0.59% | C+ |
SkyWest leads Southwest by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DSM 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 20 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am4 flights—
- 8am–11am365 flights80.1%
- 11am–2pm33 flights84.8%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm279 flights64.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.9% on time, against 84.8% for the 11am–2pm slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DSM to DEN through the year
July is the worst month at 52.6% on time, 34 points below November, the best at 86.4%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 79 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 81.6% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 70.0%. 12 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. National Airspace System accounts for 52% of the 13,000 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.
- 52%National Airspace System
- 24%Carrier
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%Extreme weather
52% 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 7,007 minutes out of 13,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 13,438 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.59%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.0% 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 589 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.1% on time across 681 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 681 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 DSM to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 681 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 74.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 674 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DSM to DEN, every carrier
- United on DEN to DSM, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on DSM to DEN90.0%
- Southwest Airlines on DSM to DEN83.4%
- Frontier Airlines on DSM to DEN77.8%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.