Flight number record

UA 259

United Airlines · Denver to Orlando

Route: DEN → MCO
Departs: 17:52
Flights: 364
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 259, check with United Airlines.

UA 259 lands a B+, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.

On time

76.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 361 completed flights

Avg delay

64 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.55%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

7.8%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 364 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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.

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 62 of 364 flights, with 17:40 (49 flights) and 17:59 (37 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 17:5262 flights17.0%
Departs 17:4049 flights13.5%
Departs 17:5937 flights10.2%

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 17:52 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 259 runs 8 points better at 76.2%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

Against the route

UA 259 next to DEN to MCO

Every carrier on DEN to MCO combined arrived on time 77.1% of the time across 4,583 flights, so UA 259 is about level with it. United flew 1,762 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 82.2% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 3 points.

UA 259 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 259thin sample	364	76.2%	64 min	0.55%	B+
All United Airlines on DEN–MCO	1,762	82.2%	76 min	0.40%	B+
All carriers on DEN–MCO	4,583	77.1%	61 min	0.63%	B+
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	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 2025 at 62.0%, a swing of 23 points on roughly 91 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 202592 flights62.0%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights85.4%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights83.1%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights74.7%

Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 259 did best on Sunday at 86.3% on time and worst on Thursday at 70.0%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 16 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 259 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 5,485 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
42%
National Airspace System
31%
Carrier
27%
Extreme weather
0%

42% 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 5,485 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 42 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 5,485 delay minutes reported on UA 259.

Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, 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

7.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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 four other city pairs in the data, including SBP to DEN (41), 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. 364 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 76.2% on time with 0.55% cancelled over 364 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures