Flight number record
UA 2656
United Airlines · Santa Ana to Denver
- Route
- SNA → DEN
- Departs
- 18:26
- Flights
- 280
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2656, check with United Airlines.
UA 2656 earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 280 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 2656's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 87 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 278 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.36%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
7.9%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 280 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 2656 flies
UA 2656 flies SNA to DEN without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:26, used on 81 of 280 flights, with 18:40 (64 flights) and 18:41 (31 flights) next.
- Departs 18:2681 flights28.9%
- Departs 18:4064 flights22.9%
- Departs 18:4131 flights11.1%
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 18:26 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and UA 2656 runs 18 points better at 86.0%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
UA 2656 next to SNA to DEN
Every carrier on SNA to DEN combined arrived on time 83.4% of the time across 3,714 flights, so UA 2656 is 3 points ahead of it. United flew 1,900 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 86.9% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 7 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 2656thin sample | 280 | 86.0% | 89 min | 0.36% | A+ |
| All United Airlines on SNA–DEN | 1,900 | 86.9% | 70 min | 0.26% | A+ |
| All carriers on SNA–DEN | 3,714 | 83.4% | 66 min | 0.30% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 2656 quarter by quarter
UA 2656 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 92.6% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 68.9%, a swing of 24 points on roughly 70 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 202523 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202568 flights92.6%
- Jan–Mar 202644 flights90.7%
- Apr–Jun 202684 flights88.0%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights68.9%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 2656 ranged from 79.1% on Monday to 90.2% on Wednesday. With about 40 flights behind each day, a spread of 11 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 2656 runs when it is late
UA 2656 often beats the schedule: 137 of 278 completed flights, 49%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When UA 2656 is late it tends to be very late: 22 of its 39 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 6 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early137 flights49.3%
- Within 15 min102 flights36.7%
- 15–29 min late9 flights3.2%
- 30–59 min late8 flights2.9%
- 1–2 hours late16 flights5.8%
- 2+ hours late6 flights2.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 278 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
10 of 45 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 22% of them. Only 4 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 2656
The latest arrival of the period was on 15 August 2026, 14 hours 36 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. Three of the five worst days fell in August 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 15 August 2026 | 14 hours 36 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 14 August 2026 | 3 hours 6 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 13 August 2026 | 2 hours 55 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 28 December 2025 | 2 hours 27 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 July 2026 | 2 hours 20 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 2656 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 3,466 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 19%Extreme weather
- 6%Carrier
Extreme weather accounts for 19% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the quarterly figures above are the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 3.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 3,466 delay minutes reported on UA 2656.
Cancellations are rare at 0.36%, 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
7.9% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 846 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 three other city pairs in the data, including DEN to BOS (181), MCO to EWR (37) and LGA to IAH (16), but none flew often enough under UA 2656 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to SNA to DEN only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 280 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 2656
For a booking, UA 2656 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 86.0% on time and 0.36% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- SNA to DEN, every carrier and departure
- DEN to SNA, the return direction
- Frontier Airlines 4372 on the same route87.8%
- John Wayne Airport (SNA) 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
- 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.