Flight number record

UA 1531

United Airlines · Minneapolis to Chicago

Route: MSP → ORD
Departs: 15:18
Flights: 360
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1531, check with United Airlines.

UA 1531 earns an F, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 54.1% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 23 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. Late arrivals average an hour and a half. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 360 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so UA 1531 runs 23 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 235 extra late arrivals.

On time

54.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 355 completed flights

Avg delay

86 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.11%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

16.1%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 360 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Schedule

When UA 1531 flies

UA 1531 flies MSP to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 15:18, used on 84 of 360 flights, with 15:25 (57 flights) and 15:17 (52 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 15:1884 flights23.3%
Departs 15:2557 flights15.8%
Departs 15:1752 flights14.4%

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 15:18 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and UA 1531 runs 18 points worse at 54.1%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

UA 1531 next to MSP to ORD

Every carrier on MSP to ORD combined arrived on time 69.9% of the time across 6,324 flights, so UA 1531 is 16 points behind it. United flew 2,398 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 69.7% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 25 points.

UA 1531 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 1531thin sample	360	54.1%	86 min	1.11%	F
All United Airlines on MSP–ORD	2,398	69.7%	84 min	1.38%	C
All carriers on MSP–ORD	6,324	69.9%	80 min	2.40%	C
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 1531 quarter by quarter

UA 1531 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 67.4% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 41.1%, a swing of 26 points on roughly 90 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 202592 flights41.1%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights58.9%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights67.4%
Apr–Jun 202687 flights48.8%

Scale runs 35% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 1531 did best on Wednesday at 63.5% on time and worst on Friday at 42.3%. Each day rests on about 51 flights, so a gap of 21 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 1531 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 50% of the 14,000 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.

National Airspace System
50%
Late-arriving aircraft
35%
Carrier
11%
Extreme weather
4%

35% 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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 14,043 delay minutes reported on UA 1531.

Cancellations sit at 1.11% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 16.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

The same number turns up on seven other city pairs in the data, including ORD to GRR (107), SFO to MSP (88) and ORD to PDX (82), but none flew often enough under UA 1531 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to MSP to ORD only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 360 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 1531

For a booking, UA 1531 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 16.1% of its completed flights arrived an hour or more late, which a short layover will not absorb. If the onward flight is on a separate ticket, the risk sits with you.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures