Carrier route record
UAFLL→DEN
United Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Denver
- Flights
- 1,174
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 74%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on FLL 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 11 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 1,174 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's FLL to DEN record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 106 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,165 completed flights
Avg delay
106 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.17%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
83.0%
Every carrier on FLL to DEN, 1,579 flights
These figures cover 1,174 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 FLL to DEN
United flew 1,174 of the 1,579 flights on FLL to DEN, most of the route. Its 87.9% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 83.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 87.9% to Southwest at 68.2%. 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) | 1,174 | 87.9% | 106 min | 0.17% | A+ |
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 22 | 76.2% | 101 min | 4.55% | B− |
| Southwest Airlines | 383 | 68.2% | 51 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 16 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am152 flights90.8%
- 8am–11am371 flights94.6%
- 11am–2pm206 flights91.2%
- 2pm–5pm382 flights79.8%
- 5pm–8pm1 flights—
- 8pm–5am62 flights78.7%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 94.6% of the time, against 78.7% for the overnight window. That is 16 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 382 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on FLL to DEN through the year
June is the worst month at 81.5% on time, 13 points below October, the best at 94.8%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 144 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 91.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.8%, a spread of 11 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on FLL to DEN runs when it is late
United on FLL to DEN often beats the schedule: 506 of 1,165 completed flights, 43%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 141 late arrivals split 41 under half an hour, 37 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 63 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early506 flights43.4%
- Within 15 min518 flights44.5%
- 15–29 min late41 flights3.5%
- 30–59 min late37 flights3.2%
- 1–2 hours late32 flights2.7%
- 2+ hours late31 flights2.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,165 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
41 of 153 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 27% of them. 29 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on FLL to DEN
The latest arrival of the period was on 16 March 2026, 22 hours 11 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. Three of the five worst days fell in March 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 16 March 2026 | 22 hours 11 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 16 March 2026 | 20 hours 52 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 15 February 2026 | 16 hours 42 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 April 2026 | 8 hours 1 minute | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 March 2026 | 7 hours 6 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
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 15,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 15%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 14,940 reported delay minutes.
38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations are rare at 0.17%, 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
5.4% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,703 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.0% on time across 1,173 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,174 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking United on FLL to DEN
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 94.8% on time and June 81.5%, a swing of 13 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,165 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to DEN, every carrier
- United on DEN to FLL, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on FLL to DEN68.2%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.