Carrier route record
UAFLL→DEN
United Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Denver
- Flights
- 1,226
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 75%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 1,226 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's FLL to DEN record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 96 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,215 completed flights
Avg delay
102 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.24%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
82.4%
Every carrier on FLL to DEN, 1,631 flights
These figures cover 1,226 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on FLL to DEN
United flew 1,226 of the 1,631 flights on FLL to DEN, most of the route. Its 87.2% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 87.2% to Southwest at 67.6%. 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) | 1,226 | 87.2% | 102 min | 0.24% | A+ |
| JetBlue Airwaysthin sample | 22 | 76.2% | 101 min | 4.55% | B− |
| Southwest Airlines | 383 | 67.6% | 58 min | 0.00% | C+ |
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 19 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–8am214 flights91.6%
- 8am–11am371 flights94.8%
- 11am–2pm206 flights91.2%
- 2pm–5pm383 flights76.4%
- 5pm–8pm1 flights—
- 8pm–5am51 flights76.0%
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 94.8% of the time, against 76.0% for the overnight window. That is 19 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 383 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on FLL to DEN through the year
August 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 90.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 81.1%. 9 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 16,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 19%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 2.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 15,859 reported delay minutes.
39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit.
Cancellations are rare at 0.24%, 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
5.3% 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 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 81.2% on time across 1,225 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,226 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 August 81.5%, a swing of 13 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,215 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 DEN67.6%
- 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 7.04 million flight records
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.