Flight number record

UA 1549

United Airlines · Houston to Washington

Route: IAH → IAD
Departs: 07:20
Flights: 315
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1549, check with United Airlines.

UA 1549 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 15 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 45 minutes. That rests on 315 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, UA 1549's record is 15 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 147 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

92.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 313 completed flights

Avg delay

44 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.63%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

1.9%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 315 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 1549 flies

UA 1549 flies IAH to IAD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:20, used on 176 of 315 flights, with 07:25 (134 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 07:20176 flights55.9%
Departs 07:25134 flights42.5%

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 07:20 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and UA 1549 runs 3 points better at 92.3%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

UA 1549 next to IAH to IAD

Every carrier on IAH to IAD combined arrived on time 80.4% of the time across 1,867 flights, so UA 1549 is 12 points ahead of it. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 13 points.

UA 1549 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 1549thin sample	315	92.3%	44 min	0.63%	A+
All United Airlines on IAH–IAD	1,867	80.4%	59 min	0.43%	B+
All carriers on IAH–IAD	1,867	80.4%	59 min	0.43%	B+
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 1549 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter UA 1549 held fairly steady: 95.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 91.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 89.8% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 94.4% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202543 flights95.3%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights91.3%
Jan–Mar 202689 flights89.8%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights94.4%

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 1549 ranged from 87.0% on Tuesday to 97.8% on Friday. With about 45 flights behind each day, a spread of 11 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why UA 1549 runs late

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 1,047 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
37%
Late-arriving aircraft
32%
National Airspace System
31%

The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 385 of the 1,047 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,047 delay minutes reported on UA 1549.

Cancellations are rare at 0.63%, 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 1.9% 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.

The 1,190 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.

Every one of the 315 flights under UA 1549 in the data flew IAH to IAD. 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. 315 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 1549

For a booking, UA 1549 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 92.3% on time and 0.63% 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