Carrier route record

UARSW→DEN

United Airlines · Fort Myers to Denver

Flights: 760
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 67%
Carriers: 3

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

United on RSW 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 8 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 760 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, United's RSW to DEN record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 82 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 755 completed flights

Avg delay

74 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.26%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

81.8%

Every carrier on RSW to DEN, 1,133 flights

These figures cover 760 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 RSW to DEN

United flew 760 of the 1,133 flights on RSW to DEN, most of the route. Its 85.8% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 85.8% to Frontier at 71.9%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on RSW to DEN
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines (this page)	760	85.8%	74 min	0.26%	A+
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	315	73.9%	60 min	0.32%	C+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	58	71.9%	98 min	1.72%	C

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 21 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–8am—
8am–11am269 flights97.4%
11am–2pm101 flights88.1%
2pm–5pm364 flights76.9%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am26 flights—

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 97.4% of the time, against 76.9% for the afternoon window. That is 21 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

United on RSW to DEN through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.April best, July worst

July is the worst month at 48.4% on time, 44 points below April, the best at 91.9%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 99 flights.

Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 90.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 80.4%. 10 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 7,894 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
43%
National Airspace System
32%
Carrier
16%
Extreme weather
9%

43% 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 7,894 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 7,894 reported delay minutes.

32% 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 2,533 minutes out of 7,894, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.26%, 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

5.2% 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.

At 1,607 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The return leg runs 85.3% on time across 759 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.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 760 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 RSW to DEN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 760 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 85.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 755 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