Carrier route record
UATUL→DEN
United Airlines · Tulsa to Denver
- Flights
- 366
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 15%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on TUL to DEN sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 45 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 366 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 893 at 82.4% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate United on TUL to DEN from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 362 completed flights
Avg delay
45 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.09%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.8%
Every carrier on TUL to DEN, 2,430 flights
These figures cover 366 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on TUL to DEN
United flew 366 of the 2,430 flights on TUL to DEN, about 15% of it. Its 75.7% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 82.4% to Frontier at 73.8%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 893 | 82.4% | 59 min | 1.12% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,129 | 79.2% | 74 min | 0.89% | B+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 366 | 75.7% | 45 min | 1.09% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 42 | 73.8% | 64 min | 0.00% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 82.4%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 366 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split United's TUL to DEN record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 75.7% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
United on TUL to DEN through the year
Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 54.8%. March is the strongest month at 90.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 35 points. March was the busiest month here, with 31 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 82.7% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 67.3%. 15 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 51% of the 3,958 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.
- 51%National Airspace System
- 47%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
51% 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 2,020 minutes out of 3,958, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 3,958 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 1,849 of the 3,958 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.09% 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 3.6% 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 541 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 runs 76.6% on time across 367 flights, within about 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. 366 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 TUL to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 366 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 75.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 362 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TUL to DEN, every carrier
- United on DEN to TUL, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on TUL to DEN82.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on TUL to DEN79.2%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- Late aircraft, weather, or the airline: what actually causes US flight delays
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.