Flight number record
UA 1920
United Airlines · Chicago to Sacramento
- Route
- ORD → SMF
- Departs
- 16:05
- Flights
- 279
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1920, check with United Airlines.
UA 1920 draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 279 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so UA 1920 runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 144 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 275 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.43%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
14.9%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 279 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When UA 1920 flies
UA 1920 flies ORD to SMF without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 16:05, used on 110 of 279 flights, with 16:02 (53 flights) and 16:00 (37 flights) next.
- Departs 16:05110 flights39.4%
- Departs 16:0253 flights19.0%
- Departs 16:0037 flights13.3%
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 16:05 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 71.9%, and UA 1920 runs 9 points worse at 62.9%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
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Against the route
UA 1920 next to ORD to SMF
Every carrier on ORD to SMF combined arrived on time 67.3% of the time across 1,347 flights, so UA 1920 is 4 points behind it. United flew 991 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 69.4% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight trails by 16 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1920thin sample | 279 | 62.9% | 71 min | 1.43% | D |
| All United Airlines on ORD–SMF | 991 | 69.4% | 65 min | 1.41% | C |
| All carriers on ORD–SMF | 1,347 | 67.3% | 64 min | 1.63% | C |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 1920 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter UA 1920 held fairly steady: 64.9% in Oct–Dec 2025, 60.0% in Jan–Mar 2026, 64.0% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 57.4% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 8 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 202575 flights64.9%
- Jan–Mar 202645 flights60.0%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights64.0%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights57.4%
Scale runs 50% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1920 did best on Monday at 74.4% on time and worst on Friday at 52.5%. Each day rests on about 40 flights, so a gap of 22 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1920 runs when it is late
The 102 late arrivals split 35 under half an hour, 26 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 41 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early47 flights17.1%
- Within 15 min126 flights45.8%
- 15–29 min late35 flights12.7%
- 30–59 min late26 flights9.5%
- 1–2 hours late22 flights8.0%
- 2+ hours late19 flights6.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 275 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 81 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 8 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 29 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 SMF.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1920
The latest arrival of the period was on 3 July 2026, 6 hours 2 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 3 July 2026 | 6 hours 2 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 30 January 2026 | 5 hours 42 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 25 January 2026 | 4 hours 20 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 23 August 2026 | 4 hours 2 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 July 2026 | 3 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why UA 1920 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 7,187 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
50% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,187 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 7,187 delay minutes reported on UA 1920.
Cancellations sit at 1.43% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
14.9% 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.
At 1,781 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
UA 1920 is not only a ORD to SMF flight. It also flew RDU to ORD (253 flights, 78.6% on time) often enough to be scored on its own. Airlines attach one number to several legs of an aircraft's day, and each leg keeps its own record here, so check which city pair is on your booking before reading a rate.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 279 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.
| Also flown as | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RDU to ORDthin sample | 253 | 78.6% | 81 min | 1.58% | B |
What to do with this
Booking UA 1920
For a booking, UA 1920 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 14.9% 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
- ORD to SMF, every carrier and departure
- SMF to ORD, the return direction
- United Airlines 2145 on the same route79.6%
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Sacramento International (SMF) 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.