Flight number record

UA 1689

United Airlines · Washington to Los Angeles

Route: IAD → LAX
Departs: 12:35
Flights: 365
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 35 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 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 130 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

90.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 363 completed flights

Avg delay

33 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.55%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

0.3%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

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 146 of 365 flights, with 12:40 (84 flights) and 12:45 (63 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 12:35146 flights40.0%
Departs 12:4084 flights23.0%
Departs 12:4563 flights17.3%

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 12:35 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.8%, and UA 1689 runs 12 points better at 90.6%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

UA 1689 next to IAD to LAX

Every carrier on IAD to LAX combined arrived on time 81.8% of the time across 2,454 flights, so UA 1689 is 9 points ahead of it. United flew 2,320 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.1% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 12 points.

UA 1689 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 1689	365	90.6%	33 min	0.55%	A+
All United Airlines on IAD–LAX	2,320	83.1%	63 min	0.99%	B+
All carriers on IAD–LAX	2,454	81.8%	63 min	0.94%	B+
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	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 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 flights90.2%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights94.6%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights83.0%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights94.5%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 1689 ranged from 86.5% on Wednesday to 96.2% on Saturday. 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 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 1,132 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
36%
Late-arriving aircraft
32%
Carrier
32%

36% 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 410 minutes out of 1,132, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 1,132 delay minutes reported on UA 1689.

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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 0.3% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 (152), PIT to IAD (53) and ORD to IAD (40), 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: 90.6% on time and 0.55% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures