Carrier route record
UARAP→DEN
United Airlines · Rapid City to Denver
- Flights
- 761
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 26%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on RAP to DEN lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 761 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's RAP to DEN record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 48 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 754 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.92%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.0%
Every carrier on RAP to DEN, 2,887 flights
These figures cover 761 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on RAP to DEN
United flew 761 of the 2,887 flights on RAP to DEN, about 26% of it. Its 82.4% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 82.4% to SkyWest at 77.8%.
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) | 761 | 82.4% | 60 min | 0.92% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 2,126 | 77.8% | 85 min | 1.51% | B |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on RAP 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 17 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–8am364 flights85.0%
- 8am–11am87 flights70.1%
- 11am–2pm157 flights79.0%
- 2pm–5pm151 flights87.2%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 87.2% on time, ahead of 8am–11am at 70.1%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on RAP to DEN through the year
July is the worst month at 65.6% on time, 29 points below January, the best at 94.6%. 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 87 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 87.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 75.0%. 13 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. Carrier accounts for 47% of the 7,922 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.
- 47%Carrier
- 28%National Airspace System
- 13%Late-arriving aircraft
- 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 7,922 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 47%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 3,728 of the 7,922 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.92% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.9% 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 301 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 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.2% on time across 762 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 761 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 RAP to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 761 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 82.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 754 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.