Flight number record
UA 1686
United Airlines · Denver to Phoenix
- Route
- DEN → PHX
- Departs
- 11:25
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1686, check with United Airlines.
UA 1686 earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 50 minutes. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 1686's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 95 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 364 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
3.8%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 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.
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Schedule
When UA 1686 flies
UA 1686 flies DEN to PHX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 11:25, used on 82 of 365 flights, with 11:33 (56 flights) and 11:24 (56 flights) next.
- Departs 11:2582 flights22.5%
- Departs 11:3356 flights15.3%
- Departs 11:2456 flights15.3%
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 11:25 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.3%, and UA 1686 runs 9 points better at 86.8%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
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Against the route
UA 1686 next to DEN to PHX
Every carrier on DEN to PHX combined arrived on time 75.6% of the time across 9,069 flights, so UA 1686 is 11 points ahead of it. United flew 2,390 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 81.6% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 8 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1686 | 365 | 86.8% | 52 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| All United Airlines on DEN–PHX | 2,390 | 81.6% | 64 min | 0.25% | B+ |
| All carriers on DEN–PHX | 9,069 | 75.6% | 69 min | 0.82% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 1686 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter UA 1686 held fairly steady: 84.8% in Oct–Dec 2025, 90.0% in Jan–Mar 2026, 85.7% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 88.7% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 5 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights84.8%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights90.0%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights85.7%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights88.7%
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1686 did best on Saturday at 94.2% on time and worst on Thursday at 78.8%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 15 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1686 runs when it is late
The 48 late arrivals split 15 under half an hour, 19 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 14 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early81 flights22.3%
- Within 15 min235 flights64.6%
- 15–29 min late15 flights4.1%
- 30–59 min late19 flights5.2%
- 1–2 hours late11 flights3.0%
- 2+ hours late3 flights0.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 364 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
7 of 41 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. 14 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1686
The latest arrival of the period was on 6 March 2026, 3 hours 11 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 6 March 2026 | 3 hours 11 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 August 2026 | 2 hours 27 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 December 2025 | 2 hours 6 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 18 September 2025 | 1 hour 42 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 February 2026 | 1 hour 32 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
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 2,509 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 992 of the 2,509 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,509 delay minutes reported on UA 1686.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
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.
The same number turns up on seven other city pairs in the data, including PHX to ORD (229), 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, UA 1686 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 86.8% on time and 0.00% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single 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 route77.3%
- United Airlines 1481 on the same route84.7%
- Frontier Airlines 4753 on the same route64.4%
- 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
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.