Flight number record

UA 1559

United Airlines · Santa Ana to Newark

Route: SNA → EWR
Departs: 12:47
Flights: 364
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1559, check with United Airlines.

UA 1559 draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is close to two hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so UA 1559 runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 174 extra late arrivals.

On time

60.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 354 completed flights

Avg delay

105 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.37%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

23.4%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 364 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 23.4% 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 1559 flies

UA 1559 flies SNA to EWR without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 12:47, used on 52 of 364 flights, with 12:38 (49 flights) and 12:37 (48 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 12:4752 flights14.3%
Departs 12:3849 flights13.5%
Departs 12:3748 flights13.2%

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 12:47 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.8%, and UA 1559 runs 19 points worse at 60.2%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

UA 1559 next to SNA to EWR

Every carrier on SNA to EWR combined arrived on time 78.7% of the time across 1,092 flights, so UA 1559 is 19 points behind it. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 19 points.

UA 1559 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 1559thin sample	364	60.2%	105 min	1.37%	D
All United Airlines on SNA–EWR	1,092	78.7%	122 min	1.74%	B
All carriers on SNA–EWR	1,092	78.7%	122 min	1.74%	B
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	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 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 flights48.9%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights47.8%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights57.6%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights86.5%

Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 1559 ranged from 53.1% on Thursday to 64.7% on Monday. 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 1559 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 71% of the 15,000 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.

National Airspace System
71%
Late-arriving aircraft
20%
Carrier
5%
Extreme weather
3%

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 11,000 minutes out of 15,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 14,856 delay minutes reported on UA 1559.

Cancellations sit at 1.37% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.37%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 23.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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.

Every one of the 364 flights under UA 1559 in the data flew SNA to EWR. 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. 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 1559

For a booking, UA 1559 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 23.4% 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.

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