Flight number record
UA 1869
United Airlines · Washington to San Antonio
- Route
- IAD → SAT
- Departs
- 17:55
- Flights
- 361
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1869, check with United Airlines.
UA 1869 lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 361 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
78.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 359 completed flights
Avg delay
101 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.55%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
10.9%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 361 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.9% 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 1869 flies
UA 1869 flies IAD to SAT without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:55, used on 138 of 361 flights, with 17:25 (72 flights) and 17:45 (41 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 17:55138 flights38.2%
- Departs 17:2572 flights19.9%
- Departs 17:4541 flights11.4%
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 17:55 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 1869 runs 11 points better at 78.8%. 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 1869 next to IAD to SAT
Every carrier on IAD to SAT combined arrived on time 85.6% of the time across 641 flights, so UA 1869 is 7 points behind it. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, close to this flight's figure.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1869thin sample | 361 | 78.8% | 101 min | 0.55% | B+ |
| All United Airlines on IAD–SAT | 641 | 85.6% | 92 min | 0.62% | A+ |
| All carriers on IAD–SAT | 641 | 85.6% | 92 min | 0.62% | A+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 1869 quarter by quarter
UA 1869 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 85.2% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 71.6%, a swing of 14 points on roughly 90 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 202588 flights71.6%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights82.6%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights85.2%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights75.8%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1869 did best on Tuesday at 88.7% on time and worst on Sunday at 68.0%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 21 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why UA 1869 runs late
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 7,691 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%Extreme weather
- 17%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 18% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the quarterly figures above are the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 3.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 7,691 delay minutes reported on UA 1869.
Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, 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. 10.9% 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 1,362 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 IAD (42), ORF to ORD (26) and BOS to ORD (1), but none flew often enough under UA 1869 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to IAD to SAT only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 361 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 1869
For a booking, UA 1869 is one of the weaker ways to fly IAD to SAT: 7 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
- Washington Dulles International (IAD) delay statistics
- San Antonio International (SAT) 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.