Carrier route record
UAGEG→DEN
United Airlines · Spokane to Denver
- Flights
- 826
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 40%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 9 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 826 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's GEG to DEN record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 85 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 817 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.36%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
84.2%
Every carrier on GEG to DEN, 2,042 flights
These figures cover 826 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on GEG to DEN
United flew 826 of the 2,042 flights on GEG to DEN, about 40% of it. Its 85.8% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 84.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 86.3% to Frontier at 80.6%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 258 | 86.3% | 98 min | 1.16% | A |
| United Airlines (this page) | 826 | 85.8% | 86 min | 0.36% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 859 | 82.4% | 54 min | 0.12% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 99 | 80.6% | 32 min | 0.00% | B+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on GEG to DEN
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 22 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am364 flights95.9%
- 8am–11am1 flights—
- 11am–2pm364 flights78.8%
- 2pm–5pm79 flights74.0%
- 5pm–8pm16 flights—
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 95.9% of the time, against 74.0% for the afternoon window. That is 22 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
July is the worst month at 75.6% on time, 23 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 92 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 90.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 82.4%, a spread of 8 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on GEG to DEN runs when it is late
United on GEG to DEN often beats the schedule: 332 of 817 completed flights, 41%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 116 late arrivals split 37 under half an hour, 32 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 47 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early332 flights40.6%
- Within 15 min369 flights45.2%
- 15–29 min late37 flights4.5%
- 30–59 min late32 flights3.9%
- 1–2 hours late19 flights2.3%
- 2+ hours late28 flights3.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 817 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
24 of 114 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 21% of them. 26 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on GEG to DEN
The latest arrival of the period was on 17 March 2026, 8 hours behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 17 March 2026 | 8 hours | Carrier |
| 29 July 2026 | 7 hours 56 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 March 2026 | 7 hours 54 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 November 2025 | 7 hours 37 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 24 July 2026 | 6 hours 19 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 9,976 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%National Airspace System
- 30%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 9,976 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 35 to one. The split is drawn from 9,976 reported delay minutes.
35% 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 3,443 minutes out of 9,976, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.36%, 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
5.8% 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 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.6% on time across 826 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 826 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. 826 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 85.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 817 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- GEG to DEN, every carrier
- United on DEN to GEG, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on GEG to DEN86.3%
- Southwest Airlines on GEG to DEN82.4%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- 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.