Flight number record
UA 1689
United Airlines · Washington to Los Angeles
- Route
- IAD → LAX
- Departs
- 12:35
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1689, check with United Airlines.
UA 1689 earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 13 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 40 minutes. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 1689's record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 128 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 363 completed flights
Avg delay
40 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.55%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
0.6%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 14 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 1689 flies
UA 1689 flies IAD to LAX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 12:35, used on 104 of 365 flights, with 12:40 (84 flights) and 13:10 (75 flights) next.
- Departs 12:35104 flights28.5%
- Departs 12:4084 flights23.0%
- Departs 13:1075 flights20.5%
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 12:35 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.3%, and UA 1689 runs 12 points better at 90.1%. 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 1689 next to IAD to LAX
Every carrier on IAD to LAX combined arrived on time 84.1% of the time across 2,460 flights, so UA 1689 is 6 points ahead of it. United flew 2,340 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 84.6% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 11 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1689 | 365 | 90.1% | 40 min | 0.55% | A+ |
| All United Airlines on IAD–LAX | 2,340 | 84.6% | 61 min | 0.77% | B+ |
| All carriers on IAD–LAX | 2,460 | 84.1% | 60 min | 0.73% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 1689 quarter by quarter
UA 1689 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 94.6% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 83.0%, a swing of 12 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 flights86.7%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights94.6%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights83.0%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights94.5%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights88.7%
Scale runs 75% to 100%.
By weekday, UA 1689 did best on Monday at 96.2% on time and worst on Tuesday at 80.8%. 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 1689 runs when it is late
UA 1689 often beats the schedule: 171 of 363 completed flights, 47%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 20 of the 36 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 2 reached an hour or more.
- 15+ min early171 flights47.1%
- Within 15 min156 flights43.0%
- 15–29 min late20 flights5.5%
- 30–59 min late14 flights3.9%
- 1–2 hours late0 flights0.0%
- 2+ hours late2 flights0.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 363 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 39 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 20 still arrived on time. 17 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1689
The latest arrival of the period was on 30 September 2025, 3 hours 23 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 30 September 2025 | 3 hours 23 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 18 July 2026 | 3 hours 16 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 February 2026 | 56 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 September 2025 | 54 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 February 2026 | 53 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why UA 1689 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 1,424 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 25%Carrier
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 1,424 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 to one. The split is drawn from 1,424 delay minutes reported on UA 1689.
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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 0.6% 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.
At 2,288 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The same number turns up on four other city pairs in the data, including MCO to IAD (90), ORD to IAD (81) and PIT to IAD (53), but none flew often enough under UA 1689 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to IAD to LAX 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 1689
For a booking, UA 1689 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 90.1% on time and 0.55% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- IAD to LAX, every carrier and departure
- LAX to IAD, the return direction
- United Airlines 2276 on the same route70.4%
- United Airlines 1385 on the same route83.9%
- Washington Dulles International (IAD) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) 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.