Flight number record
UA 1781
United Airlines · Des Moines to Denver
- Route
- DSM → DEN
- Departs
- 17:17
- Flights
- 262
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1781, check with United Airlines.
UA 1781 draws a C+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 262 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so UA 1781 runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 120 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 262 completed flights
Avg delay
96 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
17.9%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 262 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When UA 1781 flies
UA 1781 flies DSM to DEN without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:17, used on 126 of 262 flights, with 17:15 (40 flights) and 17:14 (36 flights) next.
- Departs 17:17126 flights48.1%
- Departs 17:1540 flights15.3%
- Departs 17:1436 flights13.7%
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 17:17 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and UA 1781 runs 3 points worse at 65.3%. 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 1781 next to DSM to DEN
Every carrier on DSM to DEN combined arrived on time 83.5% of the time across 2,327 flights, so UA 1781 is 18 points behind it. United flew 704 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 75.8% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight trails by 14 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1781thin sample | 262 | 65.3% | 96 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| All United Airlines on DSM–DEN | 704 | 75.8% | 87 min | 0.71% | B+ |
| All carriers on DSM–DEN | 2,327 | 83.5% | 88 min | 0.64% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 1781 quarter by quarter
UA 1781 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 75.3% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 42.6%, a swing of 33 points on roughly 66 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 flights66.7%
- Oct–Dec 202577 flights75.3%
- Jan–Mar 20263 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights70.3%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights42.6%
Scale runs 35% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1781 did best on Sunday at 71.1% on time and worst on Monday at 53.8%. Each day rests on about 37 flights, so a gap of 17 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1781 runs when it is late
When UA 1781 is late it tends to be very late: 47 of its 91 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 24 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early44 flights16.8%
- Within 15 min127 flights48.5%
- 15–29 min late23 flights8.8%
- 30–59 min late21 flights8.0%
- 1–2 hours late23 flights8.8%
- 2+ hours late24 flights9.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 262 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
9 of 69 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 13% of them. In the other direction, 31 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 DEN.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1781
The latest arrival of the period was on 13 August 2026, 18 hours 13 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as national airspace system delay.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 13 August 2026 | 18 hours 13 minutes | Carrier |
| 9 July 2026 | 8 hours 4 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 August 2026 | 5 hours 9 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 22 July 2026 | 4 hours 9 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 21 May 2026 | 4 hours 3 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why UA 1781 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 55% of the 8,753 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 55%National Airspace System
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
55% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 4,826 minutes out of 8,753, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 8,753 delay minutes reported on UA 1781.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% 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
17.9% 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 589 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 six other city pairs in the data, including ORD to DSM (40), SFO to DTW (32) and OMA to IAH (24), but none flew often enough under UA 1781 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DSM to DEN only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 262 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 1781
For a booking, UA 1781 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 17.9% 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
- DSM to DEN, every carrier and departure
- DEN to DSM, the return direction
- SkyWest Airlines 4777 on the same route88.0%
- Denver International (DEN) 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
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.