Flight number record
UA 1869
United Airlines · Washington to San Antonio
- Route
- IAD → SAT
- Departs
- 17:45
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
78.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 363 completed flights
Avg delay
123 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.55%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
12.4%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When UA 1869 flies
UA 1869 flies IAD to SAT without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:45, used on 82 of 365 flights, with 17:55 (80 flights) and 17:25 (72 flights) next.
- Departs 17:4582 flights22.5%
- Departs 17:5580 flights21.9%
- Departs 17:2572 flights19.7%
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 17:45 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and UA 1869 runs 10 points better at 78.2%. 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 1869 next to IAD to SAT
Every carrier on IAD to SAT combined arrived on time 84.7% of the time across 644 flights, so UA 1869 is 7 points behind 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 1869 | 365 | 78.2% | 123 min | 0.55% | B+ |
| All United Airlines on IAD–SAT | 644 | 84.7% | 108 min | 0.62% | B+ |
| All carriers on IAD–SAT | 644 | 84.7% | 108 min | 0.62% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 1869 quarter by quarter
UA 1869 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 86.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 61.3%, a swing of 25 points on roughly 73 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 flights86.7%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights82.6%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights85.2%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights75.8%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights61.3%
Scale runs 55% to 90%.
By weekday, UA 1869 did best on Tuesday at 84.6% on time and worst on Sunday at 64.7%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 20 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1869 runs when it is late
UA 1869 often beats the schedule: 128 of 363 completed flights, 35%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When UA 1869 is late it tends to be very late: 45 of its 79 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 26 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early128 flights35.3%
- Within 15 min156 flights43.0%
- 15–29 min late25 flights6.9%
- 30–59 min late9 flights2.5%
- 1–2 hours late19 flights5.2%
- 2+ hours late26 flights7.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 363 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
15 of 75 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 20% of them. In the other direction, 19 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at SAT.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1869
The latest arrival of the period was on 28 July 2026, 15 hours 12 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 28 July 2026 | 15 hours 12 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 July 2026 | 7 hours 55 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 7 March 2026 | 7 hours 54 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 August 2026 | 7 hours 35 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 12 June 2026 | 7 hours 31 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
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 9,710 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Carrier
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 9,710 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 9,710 delay minutes reported on UA 1869.
Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, 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
12.4% 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 1,362 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.
The same number turns up on three other city pairs in the data, including ORD to IAD (83), ORF to ORD (28) 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. 365 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 a flight to put a long connection behind. 12.4% 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
- 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
- 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.