Flight number record
UA 1654
United Airlines · Houston to Denver
- Route
- IAH → DEN
- Departs
- 18:05
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1654, check with United Airlines.
UA 1654 draws a D+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so UA 1654 runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 137 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 363 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.55%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
13.8%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.8% 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 1654 flies
UA 1654 flies IAH to DEN without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:05, used on 128 of 365 flights, with 18:10 (45 flights) and 18:19 (41 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 18:05128 flights35.1%
- Departs 18:1045 flights12.3%
- Departs 18:1941 flights11.2%
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 18:05 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 1654 runs 4 points worse at 63.9%. 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 1654 next to IAH to DEN
Every carrier on IAH to DEN combined arrived on time 81.2% of the time across 4,673 flights, so UA 1654 is 17 points behind it. United flew 3,875 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 81.5% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 15 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1654 | 365 | 63.9% | 64 min | 0.55% | D+ |
| All United Airlines on IAH–DEN | 3,875 | 81.5% | 69 min | 0.21% | B+ |
| All carriers on IAH–DEN | 4,673 | 81.2% | 70 min | 0.24% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 1654 quarter by quarter
UA 1654 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 77.3% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 43.5%, a swing of 34 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 flights43.5%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights72.8%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights77.3%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights62.6%
Scale runs 35% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1654 ranged from 59.6% on Monday to 69.8% on Tuesday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 10 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Delay causes
Why UA 1654 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 8,391 reported delay minutes.
- 34%National Airspace System
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
34% 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 2,878 minutes out of 8,391, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 8,391 delay minutes reported on UA 1654.
Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.8% 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 861 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.
The same number turns up on two other city pairs in the data, including MSY to IAH (45) and SDF to IAH (2), but none flew often enough under UA 1654 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to IAH to DEN only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 365 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 1654
For a booking, UA 1654 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 13.8% 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
- IAH to DEN, every carrier and departure
- DEN to IAH, the return direction
- Frontier Airlines 3229 on the same route87.0%
- United Airlines 2433 on the same route92.2%
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.