Flight number record
UA 1481
United Airlines · Denver to Phoenix
- Route
- DEN → PHX
- Departs
- 07:45
- Flights
- 339
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1481, check with United Airlines.
UA 1481 earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 40 minutes. That rests on 339 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 1481's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 74 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 339 completed flights
Avg delay
41 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
2.9%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 339 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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.
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Schedule
When UA 1481 flies
UA 1481 flies DEN to PHX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:45, used on 236 of 339 flights, with 08:00 (82 flights) next.
- Departs 07:45236 flights69.6%
- Departs 08:0082 flights24.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 07:45 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and UA 1481 runs 5 points worse at 84.7%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
UA 1481 next to DEN to PHX
Every carrier on DEN to PHX combined arrived on time 75.6% of the time across 9,069 flights, so UA 1481 is 9 points ahead of it. United flew 2,390 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 81.6% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 6 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1481thin sample | 339 | 84.7% | 41 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| All United Airlines on DEN–PHX | 2,390 | 81.6% | 64 min | 0.25% | B+ |
| All carriers on DEN–PHX | 9,069 | 75.6% | 69 min | 0.82% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 1481 quarter by quarter
UA 1481 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2026 at 90.3% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 80.2%, a swing of 10 points on roughly 85 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
- Jul–Sep 20256 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights80.2%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights82.2%
- Apr–Jun 202690 flights86.7%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights90.3%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1481 ranged from 79.2% on Thursday to 87.5% on Tuesday. With about 48 flights behind each day, a spread of 8 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1481 runs when it is late
UA 1481 often beats the schedule: 117 of 339 completed flights, 35%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 52 late arrivals split 21 under half an hour, 21 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 10 an hour or more. Not one arrived two hours late.
- 15+ min early117 flights34.5%
- Within 15 min170 flights50.1%
- 15–29 min late21 flights6.2%
- 30–59 min late21 flights6.2%
- 1–2 hours late10 flights2.9%
- 2+ hours late0 flights0.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 339 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 28 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 2 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 26 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at PHX.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1481
The latest arrival of the period was on 10 November 2025, 1 hour 59 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 10 November 2025 | 1 hour 59 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 2 April 2026 | 1 hour 53 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 29 November 2025 | 1 hour 49 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 October 2025 | 1 hour 29 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 4 October 2025 | 1 hour 28 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 1481 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 43% of the 2,111 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%National Airspace System
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
43% 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 917 minutes out of 2,111, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 2,111 delay minutes reported on UA 1481.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.9% 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 602 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 same number turns up on five other city pairs in the data, including DFW to IAH (24), DFW to DEN (5) and SFO to TPA (1), but none flew often enough under UA 1481 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DEN to PHX only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 339 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 UA 1481
For a booking, read UA 1481 as 84.7% on time with 0.00% cancelled over 339 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to PHX, every carrier and departure
- PHX to DEN, the return direction
- United Airlines 1686 on the same route86.8%
- American Airlines 1404 on the same route77.3%
- Frontier Airlines 4753 on the same route64.4%
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- United Airlines on-time record
- Every United Airlines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
A flight number here means United Airlines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.
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.