Flight number record

UA 1509

United Airlines · San Francisco to Honolulu

Route: SFO → HNL
Departs: 16:45
Flights: 365
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1509, check with United Airlines.

UA 1509 earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, UA 1509's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 76 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 365 completed flights

Avg delay

92 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

5.8%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 1509 flies

UA 1509 flies SFO to HNL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 16:45, used on 152 of 365 flights, with 16:55 (102 flights) and 16:50 (53 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 16:45152 flights41.6%
Departs 16:55102 flights27.9%
Departs 16:5053 flights14.5%

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 16:45 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and UA 1509 runs 13 points better at 85.2%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

UA 1509 next to SFO to HNL

Every carrier on SFO to HNL combined arrived on time 81.4% of the time across 2,426 flights, so UA 1509 is 4 points ahead of it. United flew 1,742 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 86.5% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 6 points.

UA 1509 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 1509	365	85.2%	92 min	0.00%	A+
All United Airlines on SFO–HNL	1,742	86.5%	72 min	0.29%	A+
All carriers on SFO–HNL	2,426	81.4%	64 min	0.95%	B+
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 1509 quarter by quarter

UA 1509 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 92.4% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 79.3%, a swing of 13 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 flights79.3%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights92.4%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights87.8%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights81.3%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 1509 ranged from 78.8% on Sunday to 90.6% 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 1509 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 4,982 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
54%
Carrier
38%
National Airspace System
8%

54% 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 4,982 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 54 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 4,982 delay minutes reported on UA 1509.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

5.8% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 2,398 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.

Every one of the 365 flights under UA 1509 in the data flew SFO to HNL. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 365 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 1509

For a booking, UA 1509 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 85.2% on time and 0.00% 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