Carrier route record
UAPIT→DEN
United Airlines · Pittsburgh to Denver
- Flights
- 820
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 51%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on PIT 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 9 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 820 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's PIT to DEN record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 91 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 814 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.73%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
80.8%
Every carrier on PIT to DEN, 1,623 flights
These figures cover 820 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 PIT to DEN
United flew 820 of the 1,623 flights on PIT to DEN, most of the route. Its 86.4% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 86.4% to Southwest at 74.6%. 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) | 820 | 86.4% | 78 min | 0.73% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 35 | 85.7% | 67 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 768 | 74.6% | 57 min | 0.78% | C+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on PIT to DEN
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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 10 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am457 flights91.9%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm342 flights81.7%
- 5pm–8pm21 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 91.9% of the time, against 81.7% for the afternoon window. That is 10 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 457 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on PIT to DEN through the year
August is the worst month at 67.2% on time, 31 points below November, the best at 97.7%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 93.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 80.9%, a spread of 12 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on PIT to DEN runs when it is late
United on PIT to DEN often beats the schedule: 278 of 814 completed flights, 34%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 111 late arrivals split 41 under half an hour, 33 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 37 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early278 flights34.2%
- Within 15 min425 flights52.2%
- 15–29 min late41 flights5.0%
- 30–59 min late33 flights4.1%
- 1–2 hours late18 flights2.2%
- 2+ hours late19 flights2.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 814 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 106 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 34 still arrived on time. 39 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on PIT to DEN
The latest arrival of the period was on 16 August 2026, 18 hours 10 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).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 16 August 2026 | 18 hours 10 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 23 June 2026 | 11 hours 6 minutes | Carrier |
| 5 April 2026 | 8 hours 44 minutes | Carrier |
| 10 July 2026 | 4 hours 50 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 August 2026 | 3 hours 59 minutes | National Airspace System |
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 8,664 reported delay minutes.
- 38%National Airspace System
- 31%Carrier
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 11%Extreme weather
38% 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 3,277 minutes out of 8,664, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 8,664 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.73%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.5% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 1,290 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 81.2% on time across 819 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 820 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 PIT to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 820 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 86.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 814 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PIT to DEN, every carrier
- United on DEN to PIT, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on PIT to DEN74.6%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Pittsburgh International (PIT) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.