Flight number record
UA 1785
United Airlines · Washington to Houston
- Route
- DCA → IAH
- Departs
- 16:34
- Flights
- 265
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1785, check with United Airlines.
UA 1785 draws a C+. 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 265 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so UA 1785 runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 109 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 264 completed flights
Avg delay
98 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.38%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
18.9%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 265 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.9% 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 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 265 flights, with 16:28 (88 flights) and 16:59 (35 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 16:3497 flights36.6%
- Departs 16:2888 flights33.2%
- Departs 16:5935 flights13.2%
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 16:34 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and UA 1785 runs 6 points worse at 66.7%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
Against the route
UA 1785 next to DCA to IAH
Every carrier on DCA to IAH combined arrived on time 81.4% of the time across 3,200 flights, so UA 1785 is 15 points behind it. United flew 2,413 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.8% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 12 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1785thin sample | 265 | 66.7% | 98 min | 0.38% | C+ |
| All United Airlines on DCA–IAH | 2,413 | 83.8% | 95 min | 0.91% | B+ |
| All carriers on DCA–IAH | 3,200 | 81.4% | 84 min | 1.97% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | 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 88 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%
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1785 did best on Wednesday at 71.8% on time and worst on Sunday at 59.0%. Each day rests on about 38 flights, so a gap of 13 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why UA 1785 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 8,633 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.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%National Airspace System
- 14%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. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 8,633 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 8,633 delay minutes reported on UA 1785.
Cancellations are rare at 0.38%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 18.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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. 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 three other city pairs in the data, including ORD to EWR (48), LGA to ORD (32) and DCA to ORD (27), 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. 265 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. 18.9% 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 1450 on the same route92.8%
- United Airlines 697 on the same route92.5%
- United Airlines 382 on the same route90.7%
- United Airlines 1381 on the same route79.6%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.