Flight number record

UA 501

United Airlines · Denver to Orlando

Route: DEN → MCO
Departs: 14:00
Flights: 343
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 343 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so UA 501 runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 57 extra late arrivals.

On time

71.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 338 completed flights

Avg delay

113 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.58%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

15.7%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 343 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.7% 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 501 flies

UA 501 flies DEN to MCO without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 14:00, used on 157 of 343 flights, with 13:50 (77 flights) and 13:55 (68 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 14:00157 flights45.8%
Departs 13:5077 flights22.4%
Departs 13:5568 flights19.8%

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 14:00 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and UA 501 runs level with that at 71.9%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

UA 501 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 501 is 5 points behind 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 7 points.

UA 501 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 501thin sample	343	71.9%	113 min	0.58%	C+
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 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 2025 at 58.9%, a swing of 24 points on roughly 86 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 flights58.9%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights76.7%
Jan–Mar 202669 flights68.7%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights82.4%

Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 501 did best on Saturday at 79.6% on time and worst on Friday at 66.7%. Each day rests on about 49 flights, so a gap of 13 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 501 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 11,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
53%
Carrier
32%
National Airspace System
15%
Extreme weather
1%

53% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 53 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 10,777 delay minutes reported on UA 501.

Cancellations are rare at 0.58%, 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. 15.7% 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.

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. 15.7% 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.

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