Flight number record
UA 1889
United Airlines · Sacramento to Denver
- Route
- SMF → DEN
- Departs
- 05:00
- Flights
- 339
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 19 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 55 minutes. That rests on 339 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 1889's record is 19 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 191 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
96.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 338 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
0.6%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 339 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 13 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.
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Schedule
When UA 1889 flies
UA 1889 is scheduled to leave Sacramento (SMF) at 05:00 local time and reach Denver (DEN) at 08:27. That slot held for 304 of the 339 scheduled departures in the data, so the figures below describe one steady operation rather than a number that moved around the clock.
- Departs 05:00304 flights89.7%
- Departs 05:0535 flights10.3%
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 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 7 points better at 96.4%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
UA 1889 next to SMF to DEN
Every carrier on SMF to DEN combined arrived on time 83.1% of the time across 3,844 flights, so UA 1889 is 13 points ahead of it. United flew 1,791 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 89.0% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 18 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1889thin sample | 339 | 96.4% | 54 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| All United Airlines on SMF–DEN | 1,791 | 89.0% | 71 min | 0.28% | A+ |
| All carriers on SMF–DEN | 3,844 | 83.1% | 57 min | 0.23% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 1889 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter UA 1889 held fairly steady: 94.4% in Oct–Dec 2025, 96.6% in Jan–Mar 2026, 98.9% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 95.2% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 5 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 20256 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights94.4%
- Jan–Mar 202689 flights96.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights98.9%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights95.2%
Scale runs 85% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1889 ranged from 91.5% on Friday to 100.0% on Wednesday. With about 48 flights behind each day, a spread of 9 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1889 runs when it is late
UA 1889 often beats the schedule: 142 of 338 completed flights, 42%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 7 of the 12 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 2 reached an hour or more.
- 15+ min early142 flights42.0%
- Within 15 min184 flights54.4%
- 15–29 min late7 flights2.1%
- 30–59 min late3 flights0.9%
- 1–2 hours late0 flights0.0%
- 2+ hours late2 flights0.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 338 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Only 14 of 338 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1889
The latest arrival of the period was on 16 February 2026, 3 hours 59 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 16 February 2026 | 3 hours 59 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 December 2025 | 2 hours 34 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 May 2026 | 39 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 July 2026 | 35 minutes | Carrier |
| 31 August 2026 | 34 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why UA 1889 runs late
Carrier accounts for 90% of the 651 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 90%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 90%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 586 of the 651 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 651 delay minutes reported on UA 1889.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are 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 8.3% 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.
The same number turns up on four other city pairs in the data, including DEN to DTW (38), 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. 339 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: 96.4% on time and 0.00% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- SMF to DEN, every carrier and departure
- DEN to SMF, the return direction
- United Airlines 2285 on the same route97.1%
- United Airlines 566 on the same route83.7%
- Sacramento International (SMF) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) 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
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.