Carrier route record
UAFAT→DEN
United Airlines · Fresno to Denver
- Flights
- 344
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 24%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on FAT to DEN earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 14 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 344 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's FAT to DEN record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 142 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
91.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 343 completed flights
Avg delay
95 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.29%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
88.7%
Every carrier on FAT to DEN, 1,449 flights
These figures cover 344 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 FAT to DEN
United flew 344 of the 1,449 flights on FAT to DEN, about 24% of it. Its 91.5% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 88.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 91.5% to Southwest at 81.0%. One 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)thin sample | 344 | 91.5% | 95 min | 0.29% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 746 | 91.1% | 87 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 359 | 81.0% | 54 min | 0.00% | B+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on FAT 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 344 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split United's FAT to DEN record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 91.5% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
United on FAT to DEN through the year
July is the worst month at 80.6% on time, 16 points below October, the best at 96.8%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 31 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 100.0% on time and Saturday the weakest at 85.4%, a spread of 15 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on FAT to DEN runs when it is late
United on FAT to DEN often beats the schedule: 122 of 343 completed flights, 36%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When United on FAT to DEN is late it tends to be very late: 15 of its 29 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 6 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early122 flights35.6%
- Within 15 min192 flights56.0%
- 15–29 min late8 flights2.3%
- 30–59 min late6 flights1.7%
- 1–2 hours late9 flights2.6%
- 2+ hours late6 flights1.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 343 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
4 of 27 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. Only 6 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on FAT to DEN
The latest arrival of the period was on 6 August 2026, 9 hours 39 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 6 August 2026 | 9 hours 39 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 13 December 2025 | 5 hours 14 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 January 2026 | 4 hours 13 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 21 August 2026 | 2 hours 41 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 April 2026 | 2 hours 36 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 58% of the 2,740 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Carrier
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 58%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,585 of the 2,740 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,740 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.29%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.4% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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.
The 844 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.3% on time across 344 flights, 21 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 21 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 344 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 FAT to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 344 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 91.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 343 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FAT to DEN, every carrier
- United on DEN to FAT, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on FAT to DEN91.1%
- Southwest Airlines on FAT to DEN81.0%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
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.