Carrier route record
UAELP→DEN
United Airlines · El Paso to Denver
- Flights
- 698
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 38%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on ELP 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 698 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's ELP to DEN record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 59 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 692 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.72%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.2%
Every carrier on ELP to DEN, 1,848 flights
These figures cover 698 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 ELP to DEN
United flew 698 of the 1,848 flights on ELP to DEN, about 38% of it. Its 83.5% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 83.5% to SkyWest at 53.3%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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) | 698 | 83.5% | 82 min | 0.72% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 339 | 78.6% | 90 min | 0.59% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 780 | 76.6% | 66 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 31 | 53.3% | 77 min | 3.23% | F− |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on ELP 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 15 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am365 flights90.5%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm333 flights76.0%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.5% of the time, against 76.0% for the afternoon window. That is 15 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on ELP to DEN through the year
August is the worst month at 70.0% on time, 25 points below April, the best at 95.0%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 91.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 76.5%. 15 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 9,322 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Carrier
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 3,500 of the 9,322 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 9,322 reported delay minutes.
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 90.5% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.72%, 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
7.1% 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 563 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 77.6% on time across 698 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 698 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 ELP to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 698 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 83.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 692 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ELP to DEN, every carrier
- United on DEN to ELP, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on ELP to DEN78.6%
- Southwest Airlines on ELP to DEN76.6%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.