Carrier route record
UAMCO→DEN
United Airlines · Orlando to Denver
- Flights
- 1,758
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 38%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on MCO 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 7 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 1,758 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 848 at 83.0% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, United's MCO to DEN record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 74 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,738 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.63%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.0%
Every carrier on MCO to DEN, 4,579 flights
These figures cover 1,758 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 MCO to DEN
United flew 1,758 of the 4,579 flights on MCO to DEN, about 38% of it. Its 85.0% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 85.0% to Southwest at 71.9%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Frontier Airlines arrives on time 83.0% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 71.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,973 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,758 | 85.0% | 87 min | 0.63% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 848 | 83.0% | 62 min | 0.94% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,973 | 71.9% | 56 min | 0.41% | C+ |
Frontier leads Southwest by 11 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on MCO 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 31 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am75 flights93.2%
- 8am–11am678 flights90.9%
- 11am–2pm381 flights90.3%
- 2pm–5pm364 flights79.6%
- 5pm–8pm204 flights68.8%
- 8pm–5am56 flights62.5%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 62.5% on time, against 93.2% for the 5am–8am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 678 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on MCO to DEN through the year
August is the worst month at 69.1% on time, 25 points below May, the best at 93.9%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 180 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 89.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.6%. 10 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 23,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 12%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 22,607 reported delay minutes.
37% 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 23,000 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 0.63%, 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
5.6% 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.
At 1,547 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 runs 82.2% on time across 1,762 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,758 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 MCO to DEN
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 93.9% on time and August 69.1%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,738 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to DEN, every carrier
- United on DEN to MCO, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to DEN83.0%
- Southwest Airlines on MCO to DEN71.9%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.