Flight number record
UA 1609
United Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Houston
- Route
- DFW → IAH
- Departs
- 17:20
- Flights
- 302
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1609, check with United Airlines.
UA 1609 draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 302 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so UA 1609 runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 144 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 294 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.32%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
13.6%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 302 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When UA 1609 flies
UA 1609 flies DFW to IAH without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:20, used on 60 of 302 flights, with 17:25 (59 flights) and 17:24 (52 flights) next.
- Departs 17:2060 flights19.9%
- Departs 17:2559 flights19.5%
- Departs 17:2452 flights17.2%
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 17:20 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and UA 1609 runs 5 points worse at 62.9%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
UA 1609 next to DFW to IAH
Every carrier on DFW to IAH combined arrived on time 70.7% of the time across 5,800 flights, so UA 1609 is 8 points behind it. United flew 2,457 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.1% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight trails by 16 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1609thin sample | 302 | 62.9% | 80 min | 2.32% | D |
| All United Airlines on DFW–IAH | 2,457 | 79.1% | 81 min | 1.71% | B |
| All carriers on DFW–IAH | 5,800 | 70.7% | 79 min | 2.43% | C |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | 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 Apr–Jun 2026 at 55.8%, a swing of 19 points on roughly 76 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 202527 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202569 flights56.7%
- Jan–Mar 202683 flights74.4%
- Apr–Jun 202678 flights55.8%
- Jul–Sep 202645 flights71.1%
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1609 did best on Saturday at 73.3% on time and worst on Thursday at 40.4%. Each day rests on about 43 flights, so a gap of 33 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1609 runs when it is late
The 109 late arrivals split 40 under half an hour, 29 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 40 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early40 flights13.6%
- Within 15 min145 flights49.3%
- 15–29 min late40 flights13.6%
- 30–59 min late29 flights9.9%
- 1–2 hours late17 flights5.8%
- 2+ hours late23 flights7.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 294 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 71 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 4 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 42 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 IAH.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1609
The latest arrival of the period was on 11 September 2025, 6 hours 40 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 11 September 2025 | 6 hours 40 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 24 November 2025 | 6 hours 21 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 25 May 2026 | 5 hours 34 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 June 2026 | 5 hours 28 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 May 2026 | 5 hours 24 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 1609 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 63% of the 8,707 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 63%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%National Airspace System
- 8%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
63% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,707 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 63 to one. The split is drawn from 8,707 delay minutes reported on UA 1609.
Cancellations sit at 2.32% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.33%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
13.6% 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.
UA 1609 is not only a DFW to IAH flight. It also flew IAH to SFO (252 flights, 80.7% on time) often enough to be scored on its own. Airlines attach one number to several legs of an aircraft's day, and each leg keeps its own record here, so check which city pair is on your booking before reading a rate.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 302 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.
| Also flown as | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IAH to SFOthin sample | 252 | 80.7% | 48 min | 1.19% | B |
What to do with this
Booking UA 1609
For a booking, UA 1609 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 13.6% 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
- DFW to IAH, every carrier and departure
- IAH to DFW, the return direction
- United Airlines 2260 on the same route94.9%
- United Airlines 2670 on the same route74.3%
- United Airlines 2682 on the same route69.1%
- United Airlines 539 on the same route84.9%
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) 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
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.