Flight number record
UA 1780
United Airlines · Houston to Des Moines
- Route
- IAH → DSM
- Departs
- 19:55
- Flights
- 344
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1780, check with United Airlines.
UA 1780 sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 344 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
75.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 339 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.16%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
8.8%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 344 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Schedule
When UA 1780 flies
UA 1780 flies IAH to DSM without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 19:55, used on 66 of 344 flights, with 20:17 (48 flights) and 20:04 (37 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 19:5566 flights19.2%
- Departs 20:1748 flights14.0%
- Departs 20:0437 flights10.8%
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 19:55 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 1780 runs 7 points better at 75.5%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
Against the route
UA 1780 next to IAH to DSM
Every carrier on IAH to DSM combined arrived on time 75.4% of the time across 347 flights, so UA 1780 is about level with it. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 4 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1780thin sample | 344 | 75.5% | 63 min | 1.16% | B |
| All United Airlines on IAH–DSMthin sample | 346 | 75.7% | 63 min | 1.16% | B |
| All carriers on IAH–DSMthin sample | 347 | 75.4% | 62 min | 1.15% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | 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 Jul–Sep 2025 at 65.2%, a swing of 26 points on roughly 86 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 202591 flights65.2%
- Oct–Dec 202577 flights72.4%
- Jan–Mar 202685 flights91.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights73.6%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1780 ranged from 70.2% on Saturday to 81.6% on Wednesday. With about 49 flights behind each day, a spread of 11 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Delay causes
Why UA 1780 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 47% of the 5,210 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 47%Carrier
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 5%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
45% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 5,210 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 5,210 delay minutes reported on UA 1780.
Cancellations sit at 1.16% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
8.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including SFO to RSW (19), 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. 344 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 75.5% on time with 1.16% cancelled over 344 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.