Flight number record
UA 1780
United Airlines · Houston to Des Moines
- Route
- IAH → DSM
- Departs
- 20:12
- Flights
- 323
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1780, check with United Airlines.
UA 1780 lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 323 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
78.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 320 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.62%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
7.8%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 323 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Schedule
When UA 1780 flies
UA 1780 flies IAH to DSM without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 20:12, used on 56 of 323 flights, with 20:17 (48 flights) and 20:09 (37 flights) next.
- Departs 20:1256 flights17.3%
- Departs 20:1748 flights14.9%
- Departs 20:0937 flights11.5%
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 20:12 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.1%, and UA 1780 runs 8 points better at 78.4%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
UA 1780 next to IAH to DSM
Every carrier on IAH to DSM combined arrived on time 78.2% of the time across 328 flights, so UA 1780 is about level with it. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, close to this flight's figure.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1780thin sample | 323 | 78.4% | 68 min | 0.62% | B+ |
| All United Airlines on IAH–DSMthin sample | 324 | 78.5% | 68 min | 0.62% | B+ |
| All carriers on IAH–DSMthin sample | 328 | 78.2% | 68 min | 0.61% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 1780 quarter by quarter
UA 1780 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 91.6% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 72.4%, a swing of 19 points on roughly 65 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 202577 flights72.4%
- Jan–Mar 202685 flights91.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights73.6%
- Jul–Sep 202640 flights75.0%
Scale runs 65% to 95%.
By weekday, UA 1780 did best on Wednesday at 87.2% on time and worst on Sunday at 71.7%. Each day rests on about 46 flights, so a gap of 16 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1780 runs when it is late
UA 1780 often beats the schedule: 87 of 320 completed flights, 27%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 69 late arrivals split 15 under half an hour, 29 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 25 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early87 flights27.2%
- Within 15 min164 flights51.3%
- 15–29 min late15 flights4.7%
- 30–59 min late29 flights9.1%
- 1–2 hours late15 flights4.7%
- 2+ hours late10 flights3.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 320 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
15 of 76 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 20% of them. 8 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1780
The latest arrival of the period was on 26 May 2026, 4 hours 55 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 26 May 2026 | 4 hours 55 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 August 2026 | 4 hours 37 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 March 2026 | 3 hours 52 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 12 November 2025 | 3 hours 38 minutes | Carrier |
| 25 April 2026 | 3 hours 38 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why UA 1780 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 4,703 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 40%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
48% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 4,703 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 to one. The split is drawn from 4,703 delay minutes reported on UA 1780.
Cancellations are rare at 0.62%, 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
7.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 802 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 three other city pairs in the data, including DEN to RNO (21), SFO to RSW (19) and RNO to LAX (12), but none flew often enough under UA 1780 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to IAH to DSM only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 323 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 1780
For a booking, read UA 1780 as 78.4% on time with 0.62% cancelled over 323 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) 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.