Carrier route record

UAOMA→DEN

United Airlines · Omaha to Denver

Flights: 1,284
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 39%
Carriers: 4

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

United on OMA to DEN lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 1,284 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 425 at 85.0% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate United on OMA to DEN from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

78.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,278 completed flights

Avg delay

74 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.47%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

75.8%

Every carrier on OMA to DEN, 3,325 flights

These figures cover 1,284 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

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Carrier by carrier

United against every carrier on OMA to DEN

United flew 1,284 of the 3,325 flights on OMA to DEN, about 39% of it. Its 78.2% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 85.0% to Frontier at 69.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 85.0% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 71.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,384 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on OMA to DEN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	425	85.0%	80 min	0.71%	A+
United Airlines (this page)	1,284	78.2%	74 min	0.47%	B+
Southwest Airlines	1,384	71.8%	62 min	0.51%	C+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	232	69.7%	119 min	0.43%	C+

The spread between SkyWest and Southwest is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

Flight by flight

United flight numbers on OMA to DEN

UA 79209:0574.6% · 262 flights

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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 27 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am213 flights92.4%
8am–11am365 flights73.0%
11am–2pm165 flights88.5%
2pm–5pm180 flights89.4%
5pm–8pm359 flights65.4%
8pm–5am2 flights—

Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.4% of the time, against 65.4% for the evening window. That is 27 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 365 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

United on OMA to DEN through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.January best, August worst

August is the worst month at 68.3% on time, 17 points below January, the best at 85.4%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 127 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 80.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 75.3%, a spread of 5 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late United on OMA to DEN runs when it is late

United on OMA to DEN often beats the schedule: 466 of 1,278 completed flights, 36%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 278 late arrivals split 88 under half an hour, 83 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 107 an hour or more.

15+ min early466 flights36.5%
Within 15 min534 flights41.8%
15–29 min late88 flights6.9%
30–59 min late83 flights6.5%
1–2 hours late59 flights4.6%
2+ hours late48 flights3.8%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 1,278 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

27 of 206 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 13% of them. In the other direction, 99 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DEN.

The worst days

Worst days for United on OMA to DEN

The latest arrival of the period was on 15 March 2026, 19 hours 37 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).

The latest arrivals of United on OMA to DEN in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
15 March 2026	19 hours 37 minutes	Extreme weather
8 May 2026	9 hours 31 minutes	Carrier
28 June 2026	7 hours 41 minutes	Carrier
13 July 2026	6 hours 48 minutes	Carrier
24 November 2025	5 hours 1 minute	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why United runs late on this route

National Airspace System accounts for 46% of the 21,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

National Airspace System
46%
Late-arriving aircraft
24%
Carrier
23%
Extreme weather
8%

46% 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 9,470 minutes out of 21,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 20,600 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.47%, below the national 1.89% 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

8.4% 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.

At 472 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 78.1% on time across 1,285 flights, within half a point 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 1,284 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 OMA to DEN

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 85.4% on time and August 68.3%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,278 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures