Flight number record
UA 459
United Airlines · Portland to Denver
- Route
- PDX → DEN
- Departs
- 05:00
- Flights
- 362
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 459, check with United Airlines.
UA 459 earns an A+. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 20 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 362 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 459's record is 20 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 199 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
97.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 361 completed flights
Avg delay
122 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.28%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
1.1%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 362 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 459 flies
UA 459 is scheduled to leave Portland (PDX) at 05:00 local time and reach Denver (DEN) at 08:31. That slot held for 316 of the 362 scheduled departures in the data, so the figures below describe one steady operation rather than a number that moved around the clock.
- Departs 05:00316 flights87.3%
- Departs 05:0545 flights12.4%
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 05:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and UA 459 runs 8 points better at 97.2%. 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 459 next to PDX to DEN
Every carrier on PDX to DEN combined arrived on time 82.3% of the time across 4,280 flights, so UA 459 is 15 points ahead of it. United flew 1,820 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 91.2% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 18 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 459thin sample | 362 | 97.2% | 122 min | 0.28% | A+ |
| All United Airlines on PDX–DEN | 1,820 | 91.2% | 74 min | 0.49% | A+ |
| All carriers on PDX–DEN | 4,280 | 82.3% | 55 min | 0.37% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 459 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter UA 459 held fairly steady: 96.7% in Jul–Sep 2025, 96.7% in Oct–Dec 2025, 97.7% in Jan–Mar 2026, 97.8% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 96.7% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of about a point is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights96.7%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights96.7%
- Jan–Mar 202688 flights97.7%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights97.8%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights96.7%
Scale runs 90% to 100%.
By weekday, UA 459 ranged from 90.2% on Saturday to 100.0% on Tuesday. With about 52 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 459 runs when it is late
UA 459 often beats the schedule: 165 of 361 completed flights, 46%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 10 late arrivals split 3 under half an hour, 3 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 4 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early165 flights45.7%
- Within 15 min186 flights51.5%
- 15–29 min late3 flights0.8%
- 30–59 min late3 flights0.8%
- 1–2 hours late0 flights0.0%
- 2+ hours late4 flights1.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 361 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Only 8 of 361 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 459
The latest arrival of the period was on 23 May 2026, 6 hours 48 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 23 May 2026 | 6 hours 48 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 February 2026 | 4 hours 54 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 September 2025 | 3 hours 2 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 December 2025 | 2 hours 19 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 November 2025 | 51 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why UA 459 runs late
Carrier accounts for 97% of the 1,220 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 97%Carrier
- 3%National Airspace System
The largest share of delay minutes, 97%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,178 of the 1,220 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,220 delay minutes reported on UA 459.
Cancellations are rare at 0.28%, 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 1.1% 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 991 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 MAF to IAH (1), DAY to ORD (1) and BTV to IAD (1), but none flew often enough under UA 459 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to PDX to DEN only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 362 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 459
For a booking, UA 459 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 97.2% on time and 0.28% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- PDX to DEN, every carrier and departure
- DEN to PDX, the return direction
- United Airlines 2375 on the same route96.7%
- United Airlines 1787 on the same route81.7%
- Portland International (PDX) 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
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
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.