Flight number record
UA 1531
United Airlines · Minneapolis to Chicago
- Route
- MSP → ORD
- Departs
- 15:18
- Flights
- 360
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 54.6% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 23 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. 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 12 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so UA 1531 runs 23 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 227 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
54.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 355 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.11%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
17.2%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 360 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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 72 of 360 flights, with 15:21 (67 flights) and 15:25 (57 flights) next.
- Departs 15:1872 flights20.0%
- Departs 15:2167 flights18.6%
- Departs 15:2557 flights15.8%
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 15:18 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 71.9%, and UA 1531 runs 17 points worse at 54.6%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
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Against the route
UA 1531 next to MSP to ORD
Every carrier on MSP to ORD combined arrived on time 70.0% of the time across 6,395 flights, so UA 1531 is 15 points behind it. United flew 2,399 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 78.8%, which this flight trails by 24 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1531thin sample | 360 | 54.6% | 93 min | 1.11% | F |
| All United Airlines on MSP–ORD | 2,399 | 69.7% | 87 min | 1.71% | C |
| All carriers on MSP–ORD | 6,395 | 70.0% | 83 min | 2.85% | C |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | 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 26.7%, a swing of 41 points on roughly 72 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 202530 flights26.7%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights58.9%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights67.4%
- Apr–Jun 202687 flights48.8%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights51.7%
Scale runs 20% to 75%.
By weekday, UA 1531 did best on Wednesday at 63.5% on time and worst on Thursday at 40.0%. Each day rests on about 51 flights, so a gap of 24 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1531 runs when it is late
The 161 late arrivals split 62 under half an hour, 38 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 61 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early20 flights5.6%
- Within 15 min174 flights49.0%
- 15–29 min late62 flights17.5%
- 30–59 min late38 flights10.7%
- 1–2 hours late25 flights7.0%
- 2+ hours late36 flights10.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 355 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
18 of 126 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. In the other direction, 53 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 ORD.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1531
The latest arrival of the period was on 2 April 2026, 19 hours 49 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 2 April 2026 | 19 hours 49 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 27 April 2026 | 8 hours 3 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 28 December 2025 | 6 hours 51 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 23 June 2026 | 6 hours 13 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 August 2026 | 5 hours 37 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 1531 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 48% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%National Airspace System
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 39 to one. The split is drawn from 14,934 delay minutes reported on UA 1531.
Cancellations sit at 1.11% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
17.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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), ORD to PDX (82) and SFO to MSP (75), 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. 17.2% 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.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to ORD, every carrier and departure
- ORD to MSP, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1544 on the same route82.9%
- United Airlines 576 on the same route71.0%
- United Airlines 658 on the same route57.1%
- United Airlines 758 on the same route76.9%
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) 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.