Flight number record
UA 1208
United Airlines · Denver to Sacramento
- Route
- DEN → SMF
- Departs
- 15:57
- Flights
- 364
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1208, check with United Airlines.
UA 1208 lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five 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 8 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
81.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 361 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.55%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
8.3%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 364 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.3% 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 1208 flies
UA 1208 flies DEN to SMF without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 15:57, used on 86 of 364 flights, with 16:03 (55 flights) and 16:05 (53 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 15:5786 flights23.6%
- Departs 16:0355 flights15.1%
- Departs 16:0553 flights14.6%
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 15:57 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and UA 1208 runs 9 points better at 81.4%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
Against the route
UA 1208 next to DEN to SMF
Every carrier on DEN to SMF combined arrived on time 73.5% of the time across 3,839 flights, so UA 1208 is 8 points ahead of it. United flew 1,797 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 80.6% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 2 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1208thin sample | 364 | 81.4% | 65 min | 0.55% | B+ |
| All United Airlines on DEN–SMF | 1,797 | 80.6% | 62 min | 0.33% | B+ |
| All carriers on DEN–SMF | 3,839 | 73.5% | 56 min | 0.34% | C+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 1208 quarter by quarter
UA 1208 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 85.6% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 74.7%, a swing of 11 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 flights74.7%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights85.4%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights85.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights80.2%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1208 ranged from 75.0% on Monday to 86.8% on Tuesday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 12 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Delay causes
Why UA 1208 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 61% of the 4,370 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.
- 61%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
61% 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 4,370 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 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 4,370 delay minutes reported on UA 1208.
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
8.3% 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.
The 909 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including MCI to DEN (36), but none flew often enough under UA 1208 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DEN to SMF 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 1208
For a booking, read UA 1208 as 81.4% on time with 0.55% cancelled over 364 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to SMF, every carrier and departure
- SMF to DEN, the return direction
- United Airlines 1415 on the same route81.9%
- United Airlines 2132 on the same route71.6%
- United Airlines 2149 on the same route94.1%
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Sacramento International (SMF) 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.