Carrier route record
UALIT→DEN
United Airlines · Little Rock to Denver
- Flights
- 102
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 6%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on LIT to DEN lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 102 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 365 at 83.3% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, United's LIT to DEN record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 59 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 101 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.98%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
80.3%
Every carrier on LIT to DEN, 1,572 flights
These figures cover 102 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on LIT to DEN
United flew 102 of the 1,572 flights on LIT to DEN, about 6% of it. Its 83.2% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 83.3% to Frontier at 77.5%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 365 | 83.3% | 70 min | 1.10% | B |
| United Airlines (this page)thin sample | 102 | 83.2% | 69 min | 0.98% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 985 | 79.3% | 77 min | 0.61% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 120 | 77.5% | 110 min | 0.00% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 83.3%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 102 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split United's LIT to DEN record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 83.2% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
United on LIT to DEN through the year
- Apr–Jun 202641 flights85.4%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights81.7%
Scale runs 75% to 90%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 83.2% on time across 102 flights.
Split by quarter, United on LIT to DEN logged 41 flights in Apr–Jun 2026 and 61 flights in Jul–Sep 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 83.2% annual figure is the one to use.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on LIT to DEN runs when it is late
United on LIT to DEN often beats the schedule: 28 of 101 completed flights, 28%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 17 late arrivals split 7 under half an hour, 3 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 7 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early28 flights27.7%
- Within 15 min56 flights55.4%
- 15–29 min late7 flights6.9%
- 30–59 min late3 flights3.0%
- 1–2 hours late3 flights3.0%
- 2+ hours late4 flights4.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 101 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Only 16 of 101 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.
The worst days
Worst days for United on LIT to DEN
The latest arrival of the period was on 24 August 2026, 3 hours 16 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. Four of the five worst days fell in August 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 24 August 2026 | 3 hours 16 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 9 June 2026 | 2 hours 34 minutes | Carrier |
| 15 August 2026 | 2 hours 33 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 August 2026 | 2 hours 11 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 August 2026 | 1 hour 56 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 72% of the 1,180 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 72%Carrier
- 14%Extreme weather
- 13%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 1,180 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 72%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 852 of the 1,180 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.98% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.9% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 771 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 63.7% on time across 103 flights, 20 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 20 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 102 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 LIT to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 102 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 83.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 101 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LIT to DEN, every carrier
- United on DEN to LIT, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on LIT to DEN83.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on LIT to DEN79.3%
- Frontier Airlines on LIT to DEN77.5%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Late aircraft, weather, or the airline: what actually causes US flight delays
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
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.