Carrier route record
UASJC→DEN
United Airlines · San Jose to Denver
- Flights
- 992
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 39%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on SJC to DEN earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 12 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 992 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's SJC to DEN record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 120 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 984 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.30%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
80.6%
Every carrier on SJC to DEN, 2,546 flights
These figures cover 992 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on SJC to DEN
United flew 992 of the 2,546 flights on SJC to DEN, about 39% of it. Its 89.3% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 89.3% to Southwest at 74.8%. 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) | 992 | 89.3% | 68 min | 0.30% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 34 | 85.3% | 47 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,520 | 74.8% | 52 min | 0.46% | C+ |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 14 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am364 flights96.7%
- 11am–2pm128 flights88.0%
- 2pm–5pm343 flights83.2%
- 5pm–8pm155 flights86.4%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 96.7% of the time, against 83.2% for the afternoon window. That is 14 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 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on SJC to DEN through the year
July is the worst month at 75.9% on time, 22 points below November, the best at 98.2%. 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 115 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 94.3% on time and Thursday the weakest at 87.8%, a spread of 7 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on SJC to DEN runs when it is late
United on SJC to DEN often beats the schedule: 429 of 984 completed flights, 44%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 105 late arrivals split 36 under half an hour, 28 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 41 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early429 flights43.6%
- Within 15 min450 flights45.7%
- 15–29 min late36 flights3.7%
- 30–59 min late28 flights2.8%
- 1–2 hours late25 flights2.5%
- 2+ hours late16 flights1.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 984 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
23 of 101 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 23% of them. 27 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on SJC to DEN
The latest arrival of the period was on 19 July 2026, 8 hours 49 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in July 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 19 July 2026 | 8 hours 49 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 May 2026 | 7 hours 16 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 July 2026 | 3 hours 11 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 July 2026 | 2 hours 56 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 6 March 2026 | 2 hours 50 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 45% of the 7,099 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%National Airspace System
- 31%Carrier
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
45% 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 3,169 minutes out of 7,099, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 7,099 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.30%, 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 4.2% 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 948 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 81.6% on time across 990 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 992 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 SJC to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 992 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 89.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 984 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SJC to DEN, every carrier
- United on DEN to SJC, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on SJC to DEN74.8%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International (SJC) 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.