Flight number record
UA 1654
United Airlines · Houston to Denver
- Route
- IAH → DEN
- Departs
- 18:19
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1654, check with United Airlines.
UA 1654 draws a C+. 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 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so UA 1654 runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 107 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 362 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.55%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
12.4%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When UA 1654 flies
UA 1654 flies IAH to DEN without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:19, used on 82 of 365 flights, with 18:05 (79 flights) and 18:10 (45 flights) next.
- Departs 18:1982 flights22.5%
- Departs 18:0579 flights21.6%
- Departs 18:1045 flights12.3%
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 18:19 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and UA 1654 runs level with that at 66.6%. 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 1654 next to IAH to DEN
Every carrier on IAH to DEN combined arrived on time 83.0% of the time across 4,728 flights, so UA 1654 is 16 points behind it. United flew 3,894 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.6% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight trails by 12 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1654 | 365 | 66.6% | 65 min | 0.55% | C+ |
| All United Airlines on IAH–DEN | 3,894 | 83.6% | 67 min | 0.23% | B+ |
| All carriers on IAH–DEN | 4,728 | 83.0% | 69 min | 0.40% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | 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 50.0%, a swing of 27 points on roughly 73 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 flights50.0%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights72.8%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights77.3%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights62.6%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights55.7%
Scale runs 40% to 85%.
By weekday, UA 1654 ranged from 61.5% on Monday to 71.2% 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.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1654 runs when it is late
The 121 late arrivals split 36 under half an hour, 40 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 45 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early83 flights22.9%
- Within 15 min158 flights43.6%
- 15–29 min late36 flights9.9%
- 30–59 min late40 flights11.0%
- 1–2 hours late32 flights8.8%
- 2+ hours late13 flights3.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 362 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
19 of 124 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. 16 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1654
The latest arrival of the period was on 16 March 2026, 4 hours 31 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 16 March 2026 | 4 hours 31 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 7 May 2026 | 4 hours 31 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 May 2026 | 4 hours 14 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 1 July 2026 | 4 hours 4 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 August 2026 | 3 hours 55 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why UA 1654 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 7,870 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
43% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,870 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 to one. The split is drawn from 7,870 delay minutes reported on UA 1654.
Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, below the national 1.89% 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
12.4% 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.
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.
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. 12.4% 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.
Related
Where to go next
- IAH to DEN, every carrier and departure
- DEN to IAH, the return direction
- Frontier Airlines 3229 on the same route87.5%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.