Carrier route record
UARNO→DEN
United Airlines · Reno to Denver
- Flights
- 1,344
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 53%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on RNO 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 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,344 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's RNO to DEN record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 74 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,330 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.52%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
85.8%
Every carrier on RNO to DEN, 2,519 flights
These figures cover 1,344 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 RNO to DEN
United flew 1,344 of the 2,519 flights on RNO to DEN, most of the route. Its 85.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 85.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 96.0% to Frontier at 83.9%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 25 | 96.0% | 23 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,088 | 86.7% | 63 min | 0.28% | A+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,344 | 85.0% | 77 min | 0.52% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 62 | 83.9% | 137 min | 0.00% | B+ |
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 15 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 flights91.7%
- 8am–11am363 flights85.3%
- 11am–2pm450 flights82.7%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm167 flights76.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.7% of the time, against 76.4% for the evening window. That is 15 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 450 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on RNO to DEN through the year
July is the worst month at 70.0% on time, 24 points below January, the best at 93.8%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 153 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 90.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.8%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 15,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 30%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 15,370 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 91.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.52%, 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
5.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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.
The 804 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.5% on time across 1,345 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,344 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 RNO to DEN
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 93.8% on time and July 70.0%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,330 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- RNO to DEN, every carrier
- United on DEN to RNO, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on RNO to DEN86.7%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.