Flight number record
UA 501
United Airlines · Denver to Orlando
- Route
- DEN → MCO
- Departs
- 14:00
- Flights
- 343
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 501, check with United Airlines.
UA 501 sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 343 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
73.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 338 completed flights
Avg delay
112 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.58%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
13.9%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 343 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When UA 501 flies
UA 501 flies DEN to MCO without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 14:00, used on 165 of 343 flights, with 13:48 (82 flights) and 13:50 (77 flights) next.
- Departs 14:00165 flights48.1%
- Departs 13:4882 flights23.9%
- Departs 13:5077 flights22.4%
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 14:00 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 71.9%, and UA 501 runs level with that at 73.7%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
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Against the route
UA 501 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 501 is 4 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 5 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 501thin sample | 343 | 73.7% | 112 min | 0.58% | C+ |
| 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 501 quarter by quarter
UA 501 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 82.4% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 65.0%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 69 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 flights66.7%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights76.7%
- Jan–Mar 202669 flights68.7%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights82.4%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights65.0%
Scale runs 55% to 90%.
By weekday, UA 501 did best on Saturday at 83.3% on time and worst on Friday at 62.5%. Each day rests on about 49 flights, so a gap of 21 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 501 runs when it is late
UA 501 often beats the schedule: 85 of 338 completed flights, 25%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When UA 501 is late it tends to be very late: 47 of its 89 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 25 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early85 flights25.1%
- Within 15 min164 flights48.5%
- 15–29 min late17 flights5.0%
- 30–59 min late25 flights7.4%
- 1–2 hours late22 flights6.5%
- 2+ hours late25 flights7.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 338 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
13 of 79 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 16% of them. In the other direction, 23 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 501
The latest arrival of the period was on 12 August 2026, 8 hours 26 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 12 August 2026 | 8 hours 26 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 June 2026 | 7 hours 44 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 November 2025 | 7 hours 1 minute | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 June 2026 | 6 hours 58 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 October 2025 | 6 hours 10 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 501 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 9,981 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 9,981 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 49 to one. The split is drawn from 9,981 delay minutes reported on UA 501.
Cancellations are rare at 0.58%, 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
13.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
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 LAS to DEN (138), SDF to DEN (21) and ORD to LAS (21), but none flew often enough under UA 501 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. 343 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 501
For a booking, UA 501 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 13.9% 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
- DEN to MCO, every carrier and departure
- MCO to DEN, the return direction
- United Airlines 259 on the same route75.6%
- United Airlines 2354 on the same route84.3%
- 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.