Carrier route record
UADTW→DEN
United Airlines · Detroit to Denver
- Flights
- 726
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 23%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on DTW to DEN lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 726 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 486 at 82.5% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, United's DTW to DEN record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 55 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 715 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.69%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
79.5%
Every carrier on DTW to DEN, 3,110 flights
These figures cover 726 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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.
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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on DTW to DEN
United flew 726 of the 3,110 flights on DTW to DEN, about 23% of it. Its 82.8% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 100.0% to Southwest at 73.9%. One 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 82.5% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 73.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 649 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 726 | 82.8% | 63 min | 0.69% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 486 | 82.5% | 80 min | 1.03% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,248 | 79.2% | 57 min | 0.16% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 649 | 73.9% | 60 min | 0.62% | C+ |
Frontier leads Southwest by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DTW to DEN
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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 726 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am365 flights84.4%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm308 flights81.9%
- 5pm–8pm53 flights77.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 84.4% on time for the 8am–11am window against 77.4% for 5pm–8pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DTW to DEN through the year
January is the weak month at 67.7% on time, against 96.7% in April. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 85.3% on time and Thursday the weakest at 78.4%, a spread of 7 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on DTW to DEN runs when it is late
United on DTW to DEN often beats the schedule: 231 of 715 completed flights, 32%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 123 late arrivals split 46 under half an hour, 38 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 39 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early231 flights32.3%
- Within 15 min361 flights50.5%
- 15–29 min late46 flights6.4%
- 30–59 min late38 flights5.3%
- 1–2 hours late23 flights3.2%
- 2+ hours late16 flights2.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 715 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
27 of 104 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 26% of them. In the other direction, 46 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DEN.
The worst days
Worst days for United on DTW to DEN
The latest arrival of the period was on 24 March 2026, 7 hours 15 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The five worst days are spread across March, August, January, December and February, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 24 March 2026 | 7 hours 15 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 August 2026 | 6 hours 2 minutes | Carrier |
| 1 January 2026 | 4 hours 14 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 December 2025 | 4 hours 4 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 17 February 2026 | 3 hours 35 minutes | National Airspace System |
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 7,697 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 38%National Airspace System
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,100 of the 7,697 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 7,697 reported delay minutes.
38% 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 2,894 minutes out of 7,697, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.69%, below the national 1.89% 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
5.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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.
The 1,123 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.
The return leg runs 80.5% on time across 726 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 726 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 DTW to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 726 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 82.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 715 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to DEN, every carrier
- United on DEN to DTW, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on DTW to DEN82.5%
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to DEN79.2%
- Southwest Airlines on DTW to DEN73.9%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- Late aircraft, weather, or the airline: what actually causes US flight delays
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.