Flight number record

UA 2285

United Airlines · Sacramento to Denver

Route: SMF → DEN
Departs: 08:45
Flights: 328
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2285, check with United Airlines.

UA 2285 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 328 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, UA 2285's record is 19 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 193 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

96.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 326 completed flights

Avg delay

78 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.61%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

1.2%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 328 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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 2285 flies

UA 2285 flies SMF to DEN without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 08:45, used on 105 of 328 flights, with 08:50 (65 flights) and 09:00 (59 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 08:45105 flights32.0%
Departs 08:5065 flights19.8%
Departs 09:0059 flights18.0%

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 08:45 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and UA 2285 runs 13 points better at 96.9%. 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 2285 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 2285 is 14 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 2285 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 2285thin sample	328	96.9%	78 min	0.61%	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 2285 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter UA 2285 held fairly steady: 94.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 98.9% in Oct–Dec 2025, 95.6% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 97.8% in Apr–Jun 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 202555 flights94.3%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights98.9%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights95.6%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights97.8%

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

By weekday, UA 2285 ranged from 93.5% on Monday to 100.0% on Saturday. 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 2285 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 67% of the 784 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
67%
National Airspace System
27%
Late-arriving aircraft
6%

The largest share of delay minutes, 67%, 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 527 of the 784 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 784 delay minutes reported on UA 2285.

Cancellations are rare at 0.61%, 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 1.2% 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 one other city pair in the data, including DEN to AUS (82), but none flew often enough under UA 2285 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. 328 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 2285

For a booking, UA 2285 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 96.9% on time and 0.61% 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