Flight number record
UA 1541
United Airlines · Denver to New Orleans
- Route
- DEN → MSY
- Departs
- 17:45
- Flights
- 364
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1541, check with United Airlines.
UA 1541 sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
74.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 363 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.27%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
11.0%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 364 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.0% 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 1541 flies
UA 1541 flies DEN to MSY without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:45, used on 89 of 364 flights, with 17:34 (37 flights) and 17:48 (37 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 17:4589 flights24.5%
- Departs 17:3437 flights10.2%
- Departs 17:4837 flights10.2%
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 17:45 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 1541 runs 6 points better at 74.4%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
Against the route
UA 1541 next to DEN to MSY
Every carrier on DEN to MSY combined arrived on time 76.8% of the time across 2,270 flights, so UA 1541 is 2 points behind it. United flew 1,017 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 84.4% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 5 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1541thin sample | 364 | 74.4% | 73 min | 0.27% | C+ |
| All United Airlines on DEN–MSY | 1,017 | 84.4% | 59 min | 0.20% | B+ |
| All carriers on DEN–MSY | 2,270 | 76.8% | 55 min | 0.48% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 1541 quarter by quarter
UA 1541 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 85.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 56.0%, a swing of 30 points on roughly 91 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 flights56.0%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights85.7%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights82.2%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights73.6%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1541 ranged from 70.6% on Thursday to 78.8% on Wednesday. With about 52 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.
Delay causes
Why UA 1541 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 59% of the 6,750 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.
- 59%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
59% 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 6,750 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 28 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 6,750 delay minutes reported on UA 1541.
Cancellations are rare at 0.27%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
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. 11.0% 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 1,062 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 three other city pairs in the data, including AUS to DEN (85), SBA to DEN (37) and RIC to DEN (1), but none flew often enough under UA 1541 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DEN to MSY only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 364 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 1541
For a booking, read UA 1541 as 74.4% on time with 0.27% cancelled over 364 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to MSY, every carrier and departure
- MSY to DEN, the return direction
- United Airlines 2273 on the same route87.9%
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) 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.