Carrier route record

UAOKC→DEN

United Airlines · Oklahoma City to Denver

Flights: 316
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 10%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.

United on OKC to DEN sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 35 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 316 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 1,262 at 81.9% on time.

SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 81.9% on time across 1,262 flights.

On time

75.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 314 completed flights

Avg delay

37 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.63%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.2%

Every carrier on OKC to DEN, 3,167 flights

These figures cover 316 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.

Carrier by carrier

United against every carrier on OKC to DEN

United flew 316 of the 3,167 flights on OKC to DEN, about 10% of it. Its 75.2% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 81.9% to United at 75.2%.

The three carriers here are closely matched: 5 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.

On-time performance by carrier on OKC to DEN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	1,262	81.9%	75 min	0.63%	B+
Southwest Airlines	1,223	78.0%	57 min	0.98%	B+
Frontier Airlines	366	77.1%	77 min	0.82%	B+
United Airlines (this page)thin sample	316	75.2%	37 min	0.63%	B+

No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 81.9%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

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 316 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am276 flights75.2%
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm38 flights73.7%
8pm–5am2 flights—

Scale runs 65% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8am–11am window is the strongest at 75.2% on time. The full set of windows spans 2 points.

Across the year

United on OKC to DEN through the year

Jul–Sep 20255 flights—
Oct–Dec 202593 flights76.3%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights79.5%
Apr–Jun 2026128 flights70.3%

Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 75.2% on time across 316 flights.

Quarter by quarter United on OKC to DEN held fairly steady: 76.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 79.5% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 70.3% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 9 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.6% on time and Saturday the weakest at 67.4%. 15 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 67% of the 2,847 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.

National Airspace System
67%
Carrier
29%
Late-arriving aircraft
3%
Extreme weather
1%

67% 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 1,919 minutes out of 2,847, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 2,847 reported delay minutes.

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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.1% 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.

At 495 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.4% on time across 319 flights, 5 points above 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 5 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 316 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 OKC to DEN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 316 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 75.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 314 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures