Flight number record

UA 2386

United Airlines · San Francisco to Washington

Route: SFO → DCA
Departs: 13:39
Flights: 365
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2386, check with United Airlines.

UA 2386 sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so UA 2386 runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 77 extra late arrivals.

On time

69.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 362 completed flights

Avg delay

63 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.82%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

10.5%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Schedule

When UA 2386 flies

UA 2386 flies SFO to DCA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 13:39, used on 61 of 365 flights, with 14:03 (56 flights) and 13:23 (49 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 13:3961 flights16.7%
Departs 14:0356 flights15.3%
Departs 13:2349 flights13.4%

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 13:39 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.8%, and UA 2386 runs 9 points worse at 69.9%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

UA 2386 next to SFO to DCA

Every carrier on SFO to DCA combined arrived on time 78.9% of the time across 1,093 flights, so UA 2386 is 9 points behind it. United flew 729 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.6% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 9 points.

UA 2386 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 2386	365	69.9%	63 min	0.82%	C+
All United Airlines on SFO–DCA	729	79.6%	60 min	0.96%	B+
All carriers on SFO–DCA	1,093	78.9%	58 min	1.01%	B
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 2386 quarter by quarter

UA 2386 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 79.5% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 62.6%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 91 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights62.6%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights72.8%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights79.5%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights64.8%

Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 2386 did best on Saturday at 80.4% on time and worst on Wednesday at 63.5%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 17 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 2386 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 56% of the 6,823 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.

National Airspace System
56%
Late-arriving aircraft
30%
Carrier
12%
Extreme weather
2%

56% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 3,819 minutes out of 6,823, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 6,823 delay minutes reported on UA 2386.

Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

At 2,442 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.

The same number turns up on three other city pairs in the data, including BUR to SFO (109), PDX to SFO (45) and ORD to SFO (37), but none flew often enough under UA 2386 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to SFO to DCA only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 365 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 2386

For a booking, UA 2386 is one of the weaker ways to fly SFO to DCA: 9 points below the route as a whole. If the schedule allows, compare it with the other departures listed on the route page before settling on this one.

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