Flight number record
UA 1541
United Airlines · Denver to New Orleans
- Route
- DEN → MSY
- Departs
- 17:45
- Flights
- 363
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1541, check with United Airlines.
UA 1541 sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 363 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
75.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 362 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.28%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
11.9%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 363 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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 96 of 363 flights, with 17:48 (37 flights) next.
- Departs 17:4596 flights26.4%
- Departs 17:4837 flights10.2%
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 17:45 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and UA 1541 runs 7 points better at 75.4%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
UA 1541 next to DEN to MSY
Every carrier on DEN to MSY combined arrived on time 77.3% of the time across 2,279 flights, so UA 1541 is 2 points behind it. United flew 1,009 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 85.4% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight trails by 3 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1541thin sample | 363 | 75.4% | 74 min | 0.28% | B+ |
| All United Airlines on DEN–MSY | 1,009 | 85.4% | 62 min | 0.20% | A+ |
| All carriers on DEN–MSY | 2,279 | 77.3% | 56 min | 0.61% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | 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 2026 at 50.0%, a swing of 36 points on roughly 73 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 flights80.0%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights85.7%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights82.2%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights73.6%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights50.0%
Scale runs 40% to 90%.
By weekday, UA 1541 ranged from 69.8% on Monday to 78.8% on Tuesday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 9 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1541 runs when it is late
UA 1541 often beats the schedule: 103 of 362 completed flights, 28%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 89 late arrivals split 28 under half an hour, 18 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 43 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early103 flights28.5%
- Within 15 min170 flights47.0%
- 15–29 min late28 flights7.7%
- 30–59 min late18 flights5.0%
- 1–2 hours late25 flights6.9%
- 2+ hours late18 flights5.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 362 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
13 of 77 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. In the other direction, 25 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 MSY.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1541
The latest arrival of the period was on 14 August 2026, 6 hours 24 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Three of the five worst days fell in July 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 14 August 2026 | 6 hours 24 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 June 2026 | 4 hours 31 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 July 2026 | 4 hours 9 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 24 July 2026 | 3 hours 54 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 29 July 2026 | 3 hours 27 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 1541 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 58% of the 6,548 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
58% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 6,548 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 49 to one. The split is drawn from 6,548 delay minutes reported on UA 1541.
Cancellations are rare at 0.28%, below the national 1.89% 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
11.9% 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 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.
The same number turns up on three other city pairs in the data, including AUS to DEN (141), SBA to DEN (24) 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. 363 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 75.4% on time with 0.28% cancelled over 363 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 route89.6%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.