Carrier route record
UAFAT→DEN
United Airlines · Fresno to Denver
- Flights
- 344
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 24%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on FAT to DEN earns an A+. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 16 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. 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 16 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 157 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
93.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 343 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.29%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
87.8%
Every carrier on FAT to DEN, 1,450 flights
These figures cover 344 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on FAT to DEN
United flew 344 of the 1,450 flights on FAT to DEN, about 24% of it. Its 93.3% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 87.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 93.3% to Southwest at 77.7%. 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 | 93.3% | 86 min | 0.29% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 747 | 90.2% | 72 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 359 | 77.7% | 63 min | 0.00% | B+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on FAT 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 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 93.3% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
United on FAT to DEN through the year
The year is unusually even here, with only 4 points between the best and worst months. April is the softest at 93.3%, but the seasonal effect is small enough that it should not drive when you travel. March was the busiest month here, with 31 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 98.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 87.5%. 11 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. Carrier accounts for 75% of the 1,978 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.
- 75%Carrier
- 13%Extreme weather
- 9%National Airspace System
- 3%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 13% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 1,978 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 75%, 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 1,488 of the 1,978 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.29%, 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 3.2% 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.
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. 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 72.3% 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 93.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 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 DEN90.2%
- Southwest Airlines on FAT to DEN77.7%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Late aircraft, weather, or the airline: what actually causes US flight delays
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
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.