Flight number record

UA 1609

United Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Houston

Route: DFW → IAH
Departs: 17:25
Flights: 315
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1609, check with United Airlines.

UA 1609 draws a D. Roughly one flight in two 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 315 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so UA 1609 runs 18 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 181 extra late arrivals.

On time

59.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 306 completed flights

Avg delay

86 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.54%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

15.4%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 315 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.4% 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 1609 flies

UA 1609 flies DFW to IAH without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:25, used on 110 of 315 flights, with 17:20 (60 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 17:25110 flights34.9%
Departs 17:2060 flights19.0%

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 17:25 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 1609 runs 9 points worse at 59.5%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

Against the route

UA 1609 next to DFW to IAH

Every carrier on DFW to IAH combined arrived on time 69.8% of the time across 5,780 flights, so UA 1609 is 10 points behind it. United flew 2,414 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 76.9% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 20 points.

UA 1609 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 1609thin sample	315	59.5%	86 min	2.54%	D
All United Airlines on DFW–IAH	2,414	76.9%	86 min	1.99%	B
All carriers on DFW–IAH	5,780	69.8%	81 min	2.92%	C
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 1609 quarter by quarter

UA 1609 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 74.4% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 51.2%, a swing of 23 points on roughly 79 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 202585 flights51.2%
Oct–Dec 202569 flights56.7%
Jan–Mar 202683 flights74.4%
Apr–Jun 202678 flights55.8%

Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 1609 did best on Tuesday at 70.0% on time and worst on Thursday at 38.3%. Each day rests on about 45 flights, so a gap of 32 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 1609 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 63% of the 11,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
63%
National Airspace System
28%
Carrier
8%
Extreme weather
1%

63% 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 11,000 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 10,679 delay minutes reported on UA 1609.

Cancellations run at 2.54%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.

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. 15.4% 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.

The same number turns up on four other city pairs in the data, including IAH to SFO (243), PSC to DEN (19) and CLT to IAH (1), but none flew often enough under UA 1609 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DFW to IAH only.

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 1609

For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on UA 1609: 2.54% of its 315 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs an hour and a half, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.

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