Carrier route record

UAGEG→DEN

United Airlines · Spokane to Denver

Flights: 833
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 40%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.

United on GEG to DEN earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 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 833 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, United's GEG to DEN record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 78 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 826 completed flights

Avg delay

83 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.36%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.8%

Every carrier on GEG to DEN, 2,063 flights

These figures cover 833 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 GEG to DEN

United flew 833 of the 2,063 flights on GEG to DEN, about 40% of it. Its 85.4% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 83.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 86.7% to Frontier at 77.7%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on GEG to DEN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	250	86.7%	105 min	0.80%	A+
United Airlines (this page)	833	85.4%	83 min	0.36%	A+
Southwest Airlines	858	82.4%	54 min	0.00%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	122	77.7%	36 min	0.00%	B+

Flight by flight

United flight numbers on GEG to DEN

UA 125513:3778.1% · 364 flights

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 28 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–8am364 flights97.0%
8am–11am1 flights—
11am–2pm364 flights78.1%
2pm–5pm39 flights69.2%
5pm–8pm63 flights70.5%
8pm–5am2 flights—

Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 97.0% of the time, against 69.2% for the afternoon window. That is 28 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 364 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

United on GEG to DEN through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.April best, July worst

July is the worst month at 73.9% on time, 24 points below April, the best at 98.3%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 91 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 88.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 82.4%. 6 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 10,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
35%
National Airspace System
33%
Carrier
32%
Extreme weather
0%

35% 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 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 35 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. The split is drawn from 10,052 reported delay minutes.

33% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 3,330 minutes out of 10,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.36%, 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

5.8% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 836 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 74.3% on time across 833 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 833 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 GEG to DEN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 833 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 85.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 826 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures