Flight profile · United Airlines
UA1959
Anchorage (ANC) to Denver (DEN) · scheduled 11:45 PM – 7:05 AM
How UA1959 performs
1,080 operations, July 2023 – July 2026.
UA1959 arrived on time 85.8% of the time, against 84.8% for all ANC → DEN flights, so this departure is 1.0 percentage points better than the route as a whole. Against United Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 1.2 points better.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 1,080 operations, July 2023 – July 2026 · If UA1959 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where UA1959 is right now
A live reading, only if you ask for it. It is not part of the reliability record above.
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Against the rest of the route
| Flight or route | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe | Flights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA1959 | 85.8% | 0.65% | -11 min | 4.0% | 1,080 |
| United Airlines on ANC → DEN | 84.6% | 0.75% | -10 min | 4.4% | 1,591 |
| All ANC → DEN flights | 84.8% | 0.67% | -9 min | 4.3% | 2,082 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
Why UA1959 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for UA1959 on ANC → DEN. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Does a late aircraft delay this flight?
How often the plane that flies UA1959 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
When the aircraft came in 15 or more minutes late, UA1959 pushed back an average of 49 minutes late; when it came in on time or early, an average of 1 minute late.
Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into ANC just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 1,070 of 1,074 departures in all. A departure is left out when that flight is unknown, was cancelled or diverted, or the aircraft had sat for more than 12 hours. A flight the airline cancelled never left and is not in the count, and one flown by a substitute aircraft is matched to the aircraft that flew it, not to the one first planned.
Against the network at the same turn length
| Share of departures | Inbound landed 15+ late | Left 15+ late after a late inbound | Left 15+ late after an on-time inbound |
|---|---|---|---|
| UA1959 | 20% | 66% | 6% |
| Network, same turn | 17% | 68% | 9% |
The schedule leaves a normal turn: enough time to clean and board if the aircraft is on time, little to spare if it is not.
The network row is every flight with a scheduled turn of 60 to 89 minutes. How often UA1959’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is higher than the network’s and, once the aircraft was late, how often UA1959 left 15 or more minutes late is about the same as the network’s.
More: Which Flight Numbers Pay for a Late Aircraft lists the flight numbers that pass a late aircraft on.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
From pushback to gate
When it leaves ANC late, does that still matter by the time it reaches DEN?
UA1959 pushes back an average of 12.2 minutes late and reaches the gate at DEN an average of 0.7 minutes late. The 11.5 minutes between those two figures are slack the published schedule already carries, which is why a late pushback on this flight does not reliably become a late arrival. It spends 17.2 minutes on the taxiways at ANC, 1.5 minutes longer than a typical ANC departure in the same hour.
On arrival at DEN, UA1959 spends 7.1 min taxiing from touchdown to the gate — ground time a connecting passenger sits through before they can even leave the aircraft, on top of however late the flight itself ran. That is 2.7 minutes shorter than a typical DEN arrival (9.8 min).
Departure delay is averaged over every pushback and arrival delay over every completed arrival, so the two counts differ by the flights that never reached DEN. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 4,434 departures from ANC scheduled in the clock hour UA1959 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at DEN (963,027 flights), not just UA1959’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
The hour it leaves ANC
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. UA1959 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 4,434 departures from ANC are scheduled in the 11 PM–12 AM hour over the period, against 58,776 across the whole day.
UA1959 is scheduled out of ANC at 11:45 PM, in the 11 PM–12 AM bank. Departures from ANC in that hour arrive on time 84.8% of the time against 83.6% across the airport’s whole day, so the hour UA1959 leaves in is an ordinary one for ANC and explains nothing about its record either way.
The two airport figures cover every departure from ANC to every destination, so they describe the slot rather than this journey — the like-for-like comparison against the route is above. Hours are scheduled local, and a number whose schedule moved between banks inside the period has no single hour and is not described here at all. Why the hour matters.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.
By day of week
Does UA1959 run worse on particular days?
Tuesday is historically the most reliable day and Saturday the least, a gap of 9.1 percentage points.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Days with fewer than 120 operations are not scored.
Other routes UA1959 has flown
A flight number is a slot in a schedule, and carriers reassign it. These are the other city pairs this number served in the analysis period.
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route UA1959 currently operates. Blending them would produce an average of two different flights.
When it goes wrong
The average describes a usual day. This is the day that ruins a connection.
24 min late
against a median of 11 min early
Percentiles over 1,080 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 1,080 records of UA1959 operating ANC → DEN, published by the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics. A flight counts as delayed when it arrives 15 or more minutes after schedule. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and reported separately. Flight numbers are resolved as carrier plus number plus route, because the same number serves different routes over time.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: Most and Least Reliable Flight Numbers · The Delay You Inherit · Making Up Time in the Air
Analysis last recomputed