Flight number record
UA 2272
United Airlines · Minneapolis to Denver
- Route
- MSP → DEN
- Departs
- 16:59
- Flights
- 333
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2272, check with United Airlines.
UA 2272 draws a D+. 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 333 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so UA 2272 runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 136 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 328 completed flights
Avg delay
99 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.60%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
20.1%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 333 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 20.1% 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 2272 flies
UA 2272 flies MSP to DEN without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 16:59, used on 83 of 333 flights, with 16:52 (57 flights) and 16:55 (48 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 16:5983 flights24.9%
- Departs 16:5257 flights17.1%
- Departs 16:5548 flights14.4%
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 16:59 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and UA 2272 runs 8 points worse at 64.0%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
Against the route
UA 2272 next to MSP to DEN
Every carrier on MSP to DEN combined arrived on time 77.6% of the time across 5,838 flights, so UA 2272 is 14 points behind it. United flew 1,459 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 78.4% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 15 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 2272thin sample | 333 | 64.0% | 99 min | 0.60% | D+ |
| All United Airlines on MSP–DEN | 1,459 | 78.4% | 80 min | 0.75% | B+ |
| All carriers on MSP–DEN | 5,838 | 77.6% | 69 min | 0.81% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 2272 quarter by quarter
UA 2272 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 71.9% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 50.6%, a swing of 21 points on roughly 83 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 202586 flights50.6%
- Oct–Dec 202566 flights67.7%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights71.9%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights65.9%
Scale runs 40% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 2272 ranged from 60.9% on Friday to 66.7% on Monday. With about 48 flights behind each day, a spread of 6 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Delay causes
Why UA 2272 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 12,000 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.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 43%National Airspace System
- 13%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
44% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 44 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 11,644 delay minutes reported on UA 2272.
Cancellations are rare at 0.60%, 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. 20.1% 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 680 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 four other city pairs in the data, including SFO to MSP (77), DEN to PSC (37) and EWR to DEN (31), but none flew often enough under UA 2272 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to MSP to DEN only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 333 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 2272
For a booking, UA 2272 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 20.1% 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 DEN, every carrier and departure
- DEN to MSP, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1025 on the same route79.7%
- United Airlines 1891 on the same route80.5%
- Delta Air Lines 2931 on the same route65.1%
- Frontier Airlines 1149 on the same route82.0%
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- 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
- 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.