Flight number record
UA 1559
United Airlines · Santa Ana to Newark
- Route
- SNA → EWR
- Departs
- 12:29
- Flights
- 343
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1559, check with United Airlines.
UA 1559 draws a D. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 343 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so UA 1559 runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 135 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 329 completed flights
Avg delay
96 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.75%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
20.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 343 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 20.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When UA 1559 flies
UA 1559 flies SNA to EWR without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 12:29, used on 81 of 343 flights, with 12:47 (52 flights) and 12:44 (35 flights) next.
- Departs 12:2981 flights23.6%
- Departs 12:4752 flights15.2%
- Departs 12:4435 flights10.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 12:29 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.3%, and UA 1559 runs 15 points worse at 63.8%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
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Against the route
UA 1559 next to SNA to EWR
Every carrier on SNA to EWR combined arrived on time 79.3% of the time across 1,091 flights, so UA 1559 is 16 points behind it. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight trails by 15 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1559thin sample | 343 | 63.8% | 96 min | 1.75% | D |
| All United Airlines on SNA–EWR | 1,091 | 79.3% | 134 min | 2.11% | B |
| All carriers on SNA–EWR | 1,091 | 79.3% | 134 min | 2.11% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 1559 quarter by quarter
UA 1559 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 86.5% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 47.8%, a swing of 39 points on roughly 86 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 202530 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights47.8%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights57.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights86.5%
- Jul–Sep 202641 flights58.3%
Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1559 did best on Wednesday at 70.8% on time and worst on Sunday at 53.3%. Each day rests on about 49 flights, so a gap of 18 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1559 runs when it is late
UA 1559 often beats the schedule: 93 of 329 completed flights, 28%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When UA 1559 is late it tends to be very late: 68 of its 119 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 33 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early93 flights28.3%
- Within 15 min117 flights35.6%
- 15–29 min late27 flights8.2%
- 30–59 min late24 flights7.3%
- 1–2 hours late35 flights10.6%
- 2+ hours late33 flights10.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 329 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
20 of 116 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. In the other direction, 23 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at EWR.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1559
The latest arrival of the period was on 17 November 2025, 7 hours 46 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 17 November 2025 | 7 hours 46 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 4 February 2026 | 6 hours 46 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 November 2025 | 5 hours 13 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 21 December 2025 | 4 hours 44 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 30 October 2025 | 4 hours 30 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why UA 1559 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 71% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 71%National Airspace System
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 5%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
71% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 8,139 minutes out of 11,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 11,475 delay minutes reported on UA 1559.
Cancellations sit at 1.75% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 2.33%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
20.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 2,433 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 one other city pair in the data, including LGA to ORD (21), but none flew often enough under UA 1559 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to SNA to EWR only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 343 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 1559
For a booking, UA 1559 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 20.7% of its completed flights arrived an hour or more late, which a short layover will not absorb. If the onward flight is on a separate ticket, the risk sits with you.
Related
Where to go next
- SNA to EWR, every carrier and departure
- EWR to SNA, the return direction
- United Airlines 2186 on the same route87.4%
- John Wayne Airport (SNA) delay statistics
- Newark Liberty International (EWR) 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
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.