Flight number record

UA 1453

United Airlines · San Francisco to Washington

Route: SFO → IAD
Departs: 16:55
Flights: 255
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1453, check with United Airlines.

UA 1453 earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 50 minutes. That rests on 255 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, UA 1453's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 98 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

87.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 254 completed flights

Avg delay

50 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.39%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

2.8%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 255 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Schedule

When UA 1453 flies

UA 1453 flies SFO to IAD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 16:55, used on 87 of 255 flights, with 16:30 (47 flights) and 16:34 (40 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 16:5587 flights34.1%
Departs 16:3047 flights18.4%
Departs 16:3440 flights15.7%

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 16:55 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and UA 1453 runs 15 points better at 87.4%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

UA 1453 next to SFO to IAD

Every carrier on SFO to IAD combined arrived on time 82.5% of the time across 2,788 flights, so UA 1453 is 5 points ahead of it. United flew 2,690 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.8% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 8 points.

UA 1453 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 1453thin sample	255	87.4%	50 min	0.39%	A+
All United Airlines on SFO–IAD	2,690	83.8%	64 min	0.74%	B+
All carriers on SFO–IAD	2,788	82.5%	64 min	0.75%	B+
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 1453 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter UA 1453 held fairly steady: 85.2% in Oct–Dec 2025, 92.2% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 83.5% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 9 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202525 flights—
Oct–Dec 202561 flights85.2%
Jan–Mar 202678 flights92.2%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights83.5%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 1453 did best on Saturday at 94.3% on time and worst on Monday at 81.1%. Each day rests on about 36 flights, so a gap of 13 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 1453 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 59% of the 1,589 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
59%
Carrier
34%
National Airspace System
7%

59% 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 1,589 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 59 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 1,589 delay minutes reported on UA 1453.

Cancellations are rare at 0.39%, 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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.

At 2,418 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 three other city pairs in the data, including BUR to SFO (244), DEN to BDL (49) and SFO to DTW (2), but none flew often enough under UA 1453 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to SFO to IAD only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 255 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 1453

For a booking, UA 1453 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 87.4% on time and 0.39% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.

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