Carrier route record
UAIND→DEN
United Airlines · Indianapolis to Denver
- Flights
- 841
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 33%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on IND to DEN lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 841 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate United on IND to DEN from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 834 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.83%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.3%
Every carrier on IND to DEN, 2,540 flights
These figures cover 841 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 IND to DEN
United flew 841 of the 2,540 flights on IND to DEN, about 33% of it. Its 80.6% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 80.6% to Southwest at 75.2%. 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) | 841 | 80.6% | 68 min | 0.83% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 294 | 78.2% | 67 min | 0.34% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,405 | 75.2% | 50 min | 0.50% | B+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on IND to DEN
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 20 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–8am6 flights—
- 8am–11am359 flights82.8%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm364 flights83.8%
- 5pm–8pm112 flights63.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.6% on time, against 83.8% for the 2pm–5pm slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on IND to DEN through the year
December is the weak month at 66.1% on time, against 91.8% in April. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. July was the busiest month here, with 88 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 87.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 75.4%. 12 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 11,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%National Airspace System
- 30%Carrier
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
41% 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 4,467 minutes out of 11,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 10,946 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.83%, 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
7.0% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 976 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 runs 81.6% on time across 841 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 841 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 IND to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 841 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 80.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 834 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- IND to DEN, every carrier
- United on DEN to IND, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on IND to DEN78.2%
- Southwest Airlines on IND to DEN75.2%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.