Carrier route record
UAMSY→DEN
United Airlines · New Orleans to Denver
- Flights
- 1,016
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 45%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on MSY to DEN earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,016 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's MSY to DEN record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 95 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,012 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.20%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.8%
Every carrier on MSY to DEN, 2,270 flights
These figures cover 1,016 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on MSY to DEN
United flew 1,016 of the 2,270 flights on MSY to DEN, about 45% of it. Its 87.1% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 87.1% to Southwest at 73.9%. 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) | 1,016 | 87.1% | 60 min | 0.20% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 195 | 74.3% | 93 min | 2.05% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,059 | 73.9% | 53 min | 0.28% | C+ |
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 12 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–8am79 flights93.7%
- 8am–11am373 flights90.8%
- 11am–2pm18 flights—
- 2pm–5pm364 flights84.0%
- 5pm–8pm182 flights81.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.7% of the time, against 81.8% for the evening window. That is 12 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 373 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on MSY to DEN through the year
July is the worst month at 73.8% on time, 23 points below November, the best at 96.9%. 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 103 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 91.8% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 82.3%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 50% of the 7,833 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 50%National Airspace System
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%Carrier
- 8%Extreme weather
50% 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 3,891 minutes out of 7,833, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 7,833 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.20%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.4% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 1,062 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 84.4% on time across 1,017 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,016 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 MSY to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,016 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 87.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,012 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSY to DEN, every carrier
- United on DEN to MSY, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on MSY to DEN74.3%
- Southwest Airlines on MSY to DEN73.9%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) 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.