Flight number record
UA 1785
United Airlines · Washington to Houston
- Route
- DCA → IAH
- Departs
- 16:34
- Flights
- 321
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1785, check with United Airlines.
UA 1785 draws a D+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 321 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so UA 1785 runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 125 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 318 completed flights
Avg delay
92 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.93%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
20.4%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 321 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 20.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When UA 1785 flies
UA 1785 flies DCA to IAH without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 16:34, used on 97 of 321 flights, with 16:28 (88 flights) and 16:59 (70 flights) next.
- Departs 16:3497 flights30.2%
- Departs 16:2888 flights27.4%
- Departs 16:5970 flights21.8%
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 16:34 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 71.9%, and UA 1785 runs 7 points worse at 64.8%. 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 1785 next to DCA to IAH
Every carrier on DCA to IAH combined arrived on time 80.3% of the time across 3,333 flights, so UA 1785 is 16 points behind it. United flew 2,384 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.5% 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 1785thin sample | 321 | 64.8% | 92 min | 0.93% | D+ |
| All United Airlines on DCA–IAH | 2,384 | 83.5% | 85 min | 0.80% | B+ |
| All carriers on DCA–IAH | 3,333 | 80.3% | 79 min | 2.31% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 1785 quarter by quarter
UA 1785 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 72.9% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 55.3%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 80 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 20255 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202585 flights72.9%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights70.8%
- Apr–Jun 202685 flights55.3%
- Jul–Sep 202656 flights55.6%
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1785 did best on Saturday at 73.3% on time and worst on Sunday at 54.2%. Each day rests on about 46 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1785 runs when it is late
UA 1785 often beats the schedule: 85 of 318 completed flights, 27%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When UA 1785 is late it tends to be very late: 65 of its 112 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 28 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early85 flights26.7%
- Within 15 min121 flights38.1%
- 15–29 min late23 flights7.2%
- 30–59 min late24 flights7.5%
- 1–2 hours late37 flights11.6%
- 2+ hours late28 flights8.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 318 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
21 of 118 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 18% of them. 15 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1785
The latest arrival of the period was on 13 March 2026, 8 hours 27 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Three of the five worst days fell in March 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 13 March 2026 | 8 hours 27 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 11 June 2026 | 5 hours 25 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 8 March 2026 | 5 hours 12 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 29 April 2026 | 4 hours 55 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 March 2026 | 4 hours 53 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 1785 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 10,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%National Airspace System
- 15%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 10,314 delay minutes reported on UA 1785.
Cancellations sit at 0.93% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
20.4% 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.
The 1,208 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 one other city pair in the data, including LGA to ORD (21), but none flew often enough under UA 1785 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DCA to IAH only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 321 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 1785
For a booking, UA 1785 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 20.4% of its completed flights arrived an hour or more late, which a short layover will not absorb. If the onward flight is on a separate ticket, the risk sits with you.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to IAH, every carrier and departure
- IAH to DCA, the return direction
- United Airlines 382 on the same route89.4%
- United Airlines 1450 on the same route92.8%
- United Airlines 697 on the same route90.5%
- United Airlines 1381 on the same route77.4%
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- 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.