Carrier route record
UASJC→DEN
United Airlines · San Jose to Denver
- Flights
- 998
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 39%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 11 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 998 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's SJC to DEN record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 107 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 991 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.40%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.0%
Every carrier on SJC to DEN, 2,579 flights
These figures cover 998 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 SJC to DEN
United flew 998 of the 2,579 flights on SJC to DEN, about 39% of it. Its 88.3% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 88.3% to Southwest at 76.3%. 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) | 998 | 88.3% | 68 min | 0.40% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 54 | 81.5% | 45 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,527 | 76.3% | 52 min | 0.46% | 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 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–8am49 flights89.8%
- 8am–11am315 flights96.2%
- 11am–2pm119 flights94.1%
- 2pm–5pm365 flights79.3%
- 5pm–8pm148 flights88.3%
- 8pm–5am2 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 96.2% of the time, against 79.3% for the afternoon window. That is 17 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 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on SJC to DEN through the year
July is the worst month at 70.0% on time, 28 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, Sunday is the strongest day at 90.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 85.6%. 5 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. National Airspace System accounts for 47% of the 7,903 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%National Airspace System
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
47% 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 3,742 minutes out of 7,903, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 7,903 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 96.2% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.40%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.6% 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.
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. 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 80.5% on time across 996 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. 998 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. 998 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 88.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 991 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 DEN76.3%
- 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 7.04 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.