Flight number record
UA 2159
United Airlines · Denver to Kansas City
- Route
- DEN → MCI
- Departs
- 09:50
- Flights
- 341
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2159, check with United Airlines.
UA 2159 earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 11 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 45 minutes. That rests on 341 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 2159's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 106 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 340 completed flights
Avg delay
47 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.29%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
1.8%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 341 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Schedule
When UA 2159 flies
UA 2159 flies DEN to MCI without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 09:50, used on 74 of 341 flights, with 09:55 (72 flights) and 10:00 (41 flights) next.
- Departs 09:5074 flights21.7%
- Departs 09:5572 flights21.1%
- Departs 10:0041 flights12.0%
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 09:50 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and UA 2159 runs 4 points better at 87.9%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
UA 2159 next to DEN to MCI
Every carrier on DEN to MCI combined arrived on time 76.5% of the time across 4,364 flights, so UA 2159 is 11 points ahead of it. United flew 1,296 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.5% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 9 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 2159thin sample | 341 | 87.9% | 47 min | 0.29% | A+ |
| All United Airlines on DEN–MCI | 1,296 | 79.5% | 70 min | 0.31% | B+ |
| All carriers on DEN–MCI | 4,364 | 76.5% | 62 min | 0.41% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 2159 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter UA 2159 held fairly steady: 90.0% in Jul–Sep 2025, 85.9% in Oct–Dec 2025, 85.0% in Jan–Mar 2026, 87.8% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 93.5% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 9 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights90.0%
- Oct–Dec 202578 flights85.9%
- Jan–Mar 202680 flights85.0%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights87.8%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights93.5%
Scale runs 75% to 100%.
By weekday, UA 2159 ranged from 84.4% on Saturday to 93.9% on Wednesday. With about 49 flights behind each day, a spread of 10 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 2159 runs when it is late
The 41 late arrivals split 18 under half an hour, 17 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 6 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early82 flights24.1%
- Within 15 min217 flights63.8%
- 15–29 min late18 flights5.3%
- 30–59 min late17 flights5.0%
- 1–2 hours late2 flights0.6%
- 2+ hours late4 flights1.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 340 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
11 of 40 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 28% of them. 12 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 2159
The latest arrival of the period was on 6 March 2026, 4 hours 34 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 a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 6 March 2026 | 4 hours 34 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 February 2026 | 2 hours 37 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 30 June 2026 | 2 hours 11 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 March 2026 | 2 hours | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 October 2025 | 1 hour 34 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 2159 runs late
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 1,934 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Carrier
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 1,934 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 33 to one. The split is drawn from 1,934 delay minutes reported on UA 2159.
Cancellations are rare at 0.29%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 1.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 533 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 MCI to IAH (20), LAX to IAD (19) and DEN to GSP (4), but none flew often enough under UA 2159 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DEN to MCI only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 341 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 2159
For a booking, UA 2159 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 87.9% on time and 0.29% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to MCI, every carrier and departure
- MCI to DEN, the return direction
- United Airlines 586 on the same route87.0%
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Kansas City International (MCI) 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.