Flight number record
UA 1481
United Airlines · Denver to Phoenix
- Route
- DEN → PHX
- Departs
- 07:45
- Flights
- 314
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1481, check with United Airlines.
UA 1481 lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 314 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 1481's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 58 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 314 completed flights
Avg delay
47 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
3.8%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 314 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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.
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 243 of 314 flights, with 08:00 (41 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 07:45243 flights77.4%
- Departs 08:0041 flights13.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
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 6 points worse at 83.4%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
Against the route
UA 1481 next to DEN to PHX
Every carrier on DEN to PHX combined arrived on time 75.7% of the time across 8,930 flights, so UA 1481 is 8 points ahead of it. United flew 2,369 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 80.5% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 4 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1481thin sample | 314 | 83.4% | 47 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| All United Airlines on DEN–PHX | 2,369 | 80.5% | 63 min | 0.34% | B+ |
| All carriers on DEN–PHX | 8,930 | 75.7% | 67 min | 0.80% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 1481 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter UA 1481 held fairly steady: 86.0% in Jul–Sep 2025, 80.2% in Oct–Dec 2025, 82.2% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 86.7% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202543 flights86.0%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights80.2%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights82.2%
- Apr–Jun 202690 flights86.7%
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1481 ranged from 77.3% on Thursday to 87.2% on Sunday. With about 45 flights behind each day, a spread of 10 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Delay causes
Why UA 1481 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 2,461 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%National Airspace System
- 21%Carrier
43% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 2,461 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 43 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 2,461 delay minutes reported on UA 1481.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% 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 3.8% 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 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. 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 same number turns up on six other city pairs in the data, including DFW to IAH (36), 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. 314 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 83.4% on time with 0.00% cancelled over 314 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 route83.8%
- American Airlines 1404 on the same route80.0%
- Frontier Airlines 4753 on the same route65.4%
- Frontier Airlines 1375 on the same route84.1%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.