Flight number record
UA 1686
United Airlines · Denver to Phoenix
- Route
- DEN → PHX
- Departs
- 11:31
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1686, check with United Airlines.
UA 1686 lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 1686's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 62 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 364 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
5.2%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Schedule
When UA 1686 flies
UA 1686 flies DEN to PHX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 11:31, used on 86 of 365 flights, with 11:33 (56 flights) and 11:24 (56 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 11:3186 flights23.6%
- Departs 11:3356 flights15.3%
- Departs 11:2456 flights15.3%
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 11:31 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.8%, and UA 1686 runs 5 points better at 83.8%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
Against the route
UA 1686 next to DEN to PHX
Every carrier on DEN to PHX combined arrived on time 75.7% of the time across 8,930 flights, so UA 1686 is 8 points ahead of it. United flew 2,369 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 80.5% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 5 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1686 | 365 | 83.8% | 50 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| All United Airlines on DEN–PHX | 2,369 | 80.5% | 63 min | 0.34% | B+ |
| All carriers on DEN–PHX | 8,930 | 75.7% | 67 min | 0.80% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 1686 quarter by quarter
UA 1686 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 90.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 74.7%, a swing of 15 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 flights74.7%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights84.8%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights90.0%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights85.7%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1686 ranged from 76.9% on Thursday to 88.5% on Saturday. 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 1686 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 2,933 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 29%National Airspace System
38% 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 2,933 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 38 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 2,933 delay minutes reported on UA 1686.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
5.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 602 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 six other city pairs in the data, including PHX to ORD (188), TUS to DEN (32) and LAX to DEN (20), but none flew often enough under UA 1686 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DEN to PHX 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 1686
For a booking, read UA 1686 as 83.8% on time with 0.00% cancelled over 365 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to PHX, every carrier and departure
- PHX to DEN, the return direction
- American Airlines 1404 on the same route80.0%
- Frontier Airlines 4753 on the same route65.4%
- United Airlines 1481 on the same route83.4%
- Frontier Airlines 1375 on the same route84.1%
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) 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.