Flight profile · United Airlines
UA280
Denver (DEN) to Anchorage (ANC) · scheduled 7:00 PM – 10:41 PM
How UA280 performs
1,019 operations, July 2023 – July 2026.
UA280 arrived on time 80.9% of the time, against 78.5% for all DEN → ANC flights, so this departure is 2.4 percentage points better than the route as a whole.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 1,019 operations, July 2023 – July 2026 · If UA280 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where UA280 is right now
A live reading, only if you ask for it. It is not part of the reliability record above.
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Against the rest of the route
| Flight or route | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe | Flights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA280 | 80.9% | 0.20% | -4 min | 3.5% | 1,019 |
| United Airlines on DEN → ANC | 80.7% | 0.19% | -4 min | 4.2% | 1,591 |
| All DEN → ANC flights | 78.5% | 0.24% | -4 min | 4.9% | 2,084 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
Why UA280 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for UA280 on DEN → ANC. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Does a late aircraft delay this flight?
How often the plane that flies UA280 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
The aircraft flying UA280 came in 15 or more minutes late on 14% of the departures where its previous flight is known. There are not enough departures in both groups to say how the flight left after a late one and after an on-time one.
Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into DEN just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 823 of 1,018 departures in all. A departure is left out when that flight is unknown, was cancelled or diverted, or the aircraft had sat for more than 12 hours. A flight the airline cancelled never left and is not in the count, and one flown by a substitute aircraft is matched to the aircraft that flew it, not to the one first planned.
Against the network at the same turn length
| Share of departures | Inbound landed 15+ late |
|---|---|
| UA280 | 14% |
| Network, same turn | 17% |
The schedule leaves a normal turn: enough time to clean and board if the aircraft is on time, little to spare if it is not.
The network row is every flight with a scheduled turn of 60 to 89 minutes. How often UA280’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is lower than the network’s. There are not enough departures in both groups to compare how it left.
More: Which Flight Numbers Pay for a Late Aircraft lists the flight numbers that pass a late aircraft on.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
From pushback to gate
When it leaves DEN late, does that still matter by the time it reaches ANC?
UA280 pushes back an average of 9.8 minutes late and reaches the gate at ANC an average of 1.5 minutes late. The 8.3 minutes between those two figures are slack the published schedule already carries, which is why a late pushback on this flight does not reliably become a late arrival. It spends 20.8 minutes on the taxiways at DEN, 1.0 minutes longer than a typical DEN departure in the same hour.
On arrival at ANC, UA280 spends 4.5 min taxiing from touchdown to the gate — ground time a connecting passenger sits through before they can even leave the aircraft, on top of however late the flight itself ran. That is 1.4 minutes shorter than a typical ANC arrival (5.9 min).
Departure delay is averaged over every pushback and arrival delay over every completed arrival, so the two counts differ by the flights that never reached ANC. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 81,727 departures from DEN scheduled in the clock hour UA280 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at ANC (58,786 flights), not just UA280’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
The hour it leaves DEN
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. UA280 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 81,727 departures from DEN are scheduled in the 7 PM–8 PM hour over the period, against 963,099 across the whole day.
UA280 is scheduled out of DEN at 7:00 PM, in the 7 PM–8 PM bank. Departures from DEN in that hour arrive on time 66.9% of the time against 76.0% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 9.2 points worse before anything about this particular flight is considered.
The two airport figures cover every departure from DEN to every destination, so they describe the slot rather than this journey — the like-for-like comparison against the route is above. Hours are scheduled local, and a number whose schedule moved between banks inside the period has no single hour and is not described here at all. Why the hour matters.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.
By day of week
Does UA280 run worse on particular days?
Wednesday is historically the most reliable day and Saturday the least, a gap of 12.7 percentage points.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Days with fewer than 120 operations are not scored.
Other routes UA280 has flown
A flight number is a slot in a schedule, and carriers reassign it. These are the other city pairs this number served in the analysis period.
| Route | Operated | Flights | On time |
|---|---|---|---|
| MCI→DEN Kansas City to Denver | December 18, 2025 – July 31, 2026 | 91 | 93.3% |
| BZN→DEN Bozeman to Denver | March 5–28, 2026 | 24 | — |
| SFO→DEN San Francisco to Denver | December 2–17, 2025 | 16 | — |
| ORD→LAX Chicago to Los Angeles | September 5, 2025 | 1 | — |
| MIA→DEN Miami to Denver | August 1, 2025 – September 1, 2025 | 32 | — |
| SFO→EUG San Francisco to Eugene | July 31, 2025 | 1 | — |
| ANC→IAH Anchorage to Houston | May 22, 2025 – July 20, 2025 | 60 | — |
| SAT→DEN San Antonio to Denver | May 1–21, 2025 | 21 | — |
| MCO→DEN Orlando to Denver | March 30–31, 2025 | 2 | — |
| RSW→DEN Fort Myers to Denver | January 7, 2025 – February 12, 2025 | 37 | — |
| SAN→DEN San Diego to Denver | December 3–18, 2024 | 14 | — |
| TYS→DEN Knoxville/Maryville to Denver | September 26–30, 2024 | 5 | — |
| TVC→DEN Traverse City to Denver | July 1, 2024 – August 18, 2024 | 49 | — |
| MKE→DEN Milwaukee to Denver | May 23, 2024 – June 26, 2024 | 35 | — |
| PHL→DEN Philadelphia to Denver | February 15, 2024 – March 6, 2024 | 21 | — |
| PIT→DEN Pittsburgh to Denver | January 9, 2024 – February 14, 2024 | 37 | — |
| SDF→DEN Louisville to Denver | December 21, 2023 – January 8, 2024 | 19 | — |
| ORD→DEN Chicago to Denver | July 1, 2023 – November 27, 2023 | 121 | 78.4% |
| MSN→ORD Madison to Chicago | September 29, 2023 | 1 | — |
| DFW→ORD Dallas–Fort Worth to Chicago | September 6–28, 2023 | 23 | — |
| JAX→ORD Jacksonville to Chicago | August 1, 2023 – September 4, 2023 | 35 | — |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route UA280 currently operates. Blending them would produce an average of two different flights.
When it goes wrong
The average describes a usual day. This is the day that ruins a connection.
30 min late
against a median of 4 min early
Percentiles over 1,019 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 1,019 records of UA280 operating DEN → ANC, published by the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics. A flight counts as delayed when it arrives 15 or more minutes after schedule. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and reported separately. Flight numbers are resolved as carrier plus number plus route, because the same number serves different routes over time.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: Most and Least Reliable Flight Numbers · The Delay You Inherit · Making Up Time in the Air
Analysis last recomputed