Flight number record
UA 2285
United Airlines · Sacramento to Denver
- Route
- SMF → DEN
- Departs
- 08:50
- Flights
- 341
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 20 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 341 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 2285's record is 20 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 198 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
97.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 340 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.29%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
1.5%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 341 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Schedule
When UA 2285 flies
UA 2285 flies SMF to DEN without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 08:50, used on 106 of 341 flights, with 08:45 (105 flights) and 09:00 (52 flights) next.
- Departs 08:50106 flights31.1%
- Departs 08:45105 flights30.8%
- Departs 09:0052 flights15.2%
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 08:50 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and UA 2285 runs 13 points better at 97.1%. 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 2285 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 2285 is 14 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 2285thin sample | 341 | 97.1% | 81 min | 0.29% | 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 2285 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter UA 2285 held fairly steady: 98.9% in Oct–Dec 2025, 95.6% in Jan–Mar 2026, 97.8% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 95.1% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 4 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 202592 flights98.9%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights95.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights97.8%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights95.1%
Scale runs 85% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 2285 ranged from 91.7% on Wednesday to 100.0% on Saturday. With about 49 flights behind each day, a spread of 8 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 2285 runs when it is late
UA 2285 often beats the schedule: 164 of 340 completed flights, 48%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 10 late arrivals split 1 under half an hour, 4 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 5 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early164 flights48.2%
- Within 15 min166 flights48.8%
- 15–29 min late1 flights0.3%
- 30–59 min late4 flights1.2%
- 1–2 hours late3 flights0.9%
- 2+ hours late2 flights0.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 340 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Only 17 of 340 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 2285
The latest arrival of the period was on 14 January 2026, 4 hours 16 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 14 January 2026 | 4 hours 16 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 February 2026 | 2 hours 17 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 18 March 2026 | 1 hour 34 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 August 2026 | 1 hour 12 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 February 2026 | 1 hour 2 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why UA 2285 runs late
Carrier accounts for 78% of the 814 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 78%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
The largest share of delay minutes, 78%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 631 of the 814 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 814 delay minutes reported on UA 2285.
Cancellations are rare at 0.29%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 1.5% 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 one other city pair in the data, including DEN to AUS (39), 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. 341 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: 97.1% on time and 0.29% 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 1889 on the same route96.4%
- 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
- The best day of the week to fly, and why it is the second lever
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.