Flight number record

UA 1889

United Airlines · Sacramento to Denver

Route: SMF → DEN
Departs: 05:00
Flights: 326
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1889, check with United Airlines.

UA 1889 earns an A+. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 20 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 326 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, UA 1889's record is 20 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 196 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

97.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 324 completed flights

Avg delay

62 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.31%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

0.6%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 326 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Schedule

When UA 1889 flies

UA 1889 flies SMF to DEN without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 05:00, used on 242 of 326 flights, with 05:15 (49 flights) and 05:05 (35 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 05:00242 flights74.2%
Departs 05:1549 flights15.0%
Departs 05:0535 flights10.7%

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 05:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and UA 1889 runs 8 points better at 97.2%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

UA 1889 next to SMF to DEN

Every carrier on SMF to DEN combined arrived on time 82.5% of the time across 3,834 flights, so UA 1889 is 15 points ahead of it. United flew 1,797 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 88.3% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 18 points.

UA 1889 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 1889thin sample	326	97.2%	62 min	0.31%	A+
All United Airlines on SMF–DEN	1,797	88.3%	64 min	0.50%	A+
All carriers on SMF–DEN	3,834	82.5%	54 min	0.42%	B+
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 1889 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter UA 1889 held fairly steady: 100.0% in Jul–Sep 2025, 94.4% in Oct–Dec 2025, 96.6% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 98.9% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202555 flights100.0%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights94.4%
Jan–Mar 202689 flights96.6%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights98.9%

Scale runs 85% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 1889 ranged from 93.3% on Friday to 100.0% on Wednesday. With about 47 flights behind each day, a spread of 7 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why UA 1889 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 93% of the 559 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.

Carrier
93%
Extreme weather
4%
National Airspace System
3%

The largest share of delay minutes, 93%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 518 of the 559 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 559 delay minutes reported on UA 1889.

Cancellations are rare at 0.31%, 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 0.6% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

The 909 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 four other city pairs in the data, including DEN to DTW (100), DEN to GTF (24) and DEN to PHL (21), but none flew often enough under UA 1889 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to SMF to DEN only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 326 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 1889

For a booking, UA 1889 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 97.2% on time and 0.31% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures