Flight number record
UA 259
United Airlines · Denver to Orlando
- Route
- DEN → MCO
- Departs
- 17:52
- Flights
- 363
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 259, check with United Airlines.
UA 259 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 about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 363 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
75.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 360 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.55%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
6.4%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 363 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 4 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 259 flies
UA 259 flies DEN to MCO without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:52, used on 102 of 363 flights, with 17:47 (37 flights) next.
- Departs 17:52102 flights28.1%
- Departs 17:4737 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 17:52 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and UA 259 runs 8 points better at 75.6%. 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 259 next to DEN to MCO
Every carrier on DEN to MCO combined arrived on time 77.8% of the time across 4,528 flights, so UA 259 is 2 points behind it. United flew 1,713 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 82.7% 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 259thin sample | 363 | 75.6% | 65 min | 0.55% | B+ |
| All United Airlines on DEN–MCO | 1,713 | 82.7% | 77 min | 0.35% | B+ |
| All carriers on DEN–MCO | 4,528 | 77.8% | 62 min | 0.68% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 259 quarter by quarter
UA 259 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 85.4% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 52.5%, a swing of 33 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 flights73.3%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights85.4%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights83.1%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights74.7%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights52.5%
Scale runs 45% to 90%.
By weekday, UA 259 did best on Tuesday at 80.8% on time and worst on Saturday at 64.7%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 16 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 259 runs when it is late
UA 259 often beats the schedule: 93 of 360 completed flights, 26%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 88 late arrivals split 39 under half an hour, 26 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 23 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early93 flights25.8%
- Within 15 min179 flights49.7%
- 15–29 min late39 flights10.8%
- 30–59 min late26 flights7.2%
- 1–2 hours late12 flights3.3%
- 2+ hours late11 flights3.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 360 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 79 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 24 still arrived on time. In the other direction, 33 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 MCO.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 259
The latest arrival of the period was on 3 August 2026, 11 hours 44 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in August 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 3 August 2026 | 11 hours 44 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 August 2026 | 5 hours 45 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 August 2026 | 5 hours | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 June 2026 | 4 hours 28 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 22 July 2026 | 4 hours 8 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 259 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 5,734 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 26%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 5,734 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 34 to one. The split is drawn from 5,734 delay minutes reported on UA 259.
Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, 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
6.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,547 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The same number turns up on six other city pairs in the data, including SBP to DEN (82), SFO to DEN (24) and SAN to SFO (21), but none flew often enough under UA 259 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DEN to MCO 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 259
For a booking, read UA 259 as 75.6% on time with 0.55% 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 MCO, every carrier and departure
- MCO to DEN, the return direction
- United Airlines 2354 on the same route84.3%
- United Airlines 501 on the same route73.7%
- Frontier Airlines 3312 on the same route73.8%
- United Airlines 2292 on the same route88.2%
- Frontier Airlines 2520 on the same route65.8%
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) 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.