Flight number record
UA 1779
United Airlines · San Diego to Chicago
- Route
- SAN → ORD
- Departs
- 14:11
- Flights
- 364
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1779, check with United Airlines.
UA 1779 draws a D+. 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 364 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so UA 1779 runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 124 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 362 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
11.3%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 364 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When UA 1779 flies
UA 1779 flies SAN to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 14:11, used on 135 of 364 flights, with 14:16 (52 flights) and 14:10 (50 flights) next.
- Departs 14:11135 flights37.1%
- Departs 14:1652 flights14.3%
- Departs 14:1050 flights13.7%
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 14:11 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 71.9%, and UA 1779 runs 7 points worse at 64.9%. 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 1779 next to SAN to ORD
Every carrier on SAN to ORD combined arrived on time 77.6% of the time across 3,944 flights, so UA 1779 is 13 points behind it. United flew 1,677 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 80.0% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight trails by 14 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1779thin sample | 364 | 64.9% | 59 min | 0.00% | D+ |
| All United Airlines on SAN–ORD | 1,677 | 80.0% | 78 min | 0.54% | B+ |
| All carriers on SAN–ORD | 3,944 | 77.6% | 79 min | 1.34% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 1779 quarter by quarter
UA 1779 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 76.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 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 flights76.7%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights67.0%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights67.4%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights66.7%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights50.0%
Scale runs 40% to 80%.
By weekday, UA 1779 did best on Tuesday at 80.4% on time and worst on Sunday at 46.2%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 34 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1779 runs when it is late
The 127 late arrivals split 58 under half an hour, 28 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 41 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early47 flights13.0%
- Within 15 min188 flights51.9%
- 15–29 min late58 flights16.0%
- 30–59 min late28 flights7.7%
- 1–2 hours late26 flights7.2%
- 2+ hours late15 flights4.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 362 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
11 of 66 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. In the other direction, 72 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at ORD.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1779
The latest arrival of the period was on 29 November 2025, 5 hours 41 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 29 November 2025 | 5 hours 41 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 3 July 2026 | 5 hours 20 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 30 January 2026 | 4 hours 33 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 19 December 2025 | 3 hours 58 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 November 2025 | 3 hours 56 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why UA 1779 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 62% of the 7,530 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 62%National Airspace System
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%Carrier
62% 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 4,691 minutes out of 7,530, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 7,530 delay minutes reported on UA 1779.
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
11.3% 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.
At 1,723 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 one other city pair in the data, including ORD to BOS (202), but none flew often enough under UA 1779 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to SAN to ORD only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 364 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 1779
For a booking, UA 1779 is one of the weaker ways to fly SAN to ORD: 13 points below the route as a whole. If the schedule allows, compare it with the other departures listed on the route page before settling on this one.
Related
Where to go next
- SAN to ORD, every carrier and departure
- ORD to SAN, the return direction
- United Airlines 2486 on the same route78.5%
- Alaska Airlines 1493 on the same route68.3%
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) 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
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.