Flight number record
UA 2656
United Airlines · Santa Ana to Denver
- Route
- SNA → DEN
- Departs
- 18:40
- Flights
- 276
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2656, check with United Airlines.
UA 2656 earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 276 flights, with a median arrival 15 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 2656's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 95 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 272 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.09%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
7.0%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 276 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 15 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 2656 flies
UA 2656 flies SNA to DEN without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:40, used on 112 of 276 flights, with 18:26 (41 flights) and 18:41 (31 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 18:40112 flights40.6%
- Departs 18:2641 flights14.9%
- Departs 18:4131 flights11.2%
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 18:40 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 2656 runs 19 points better at 87.1%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
Against the route
UA 2656 next to SNA to DEN
Every carrier on SNA to DEN combined arrived on time 82.4% of the time across 3,697 flights, so UA 2656 is 5 points ahead of it. United flew 1,870 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 86.1% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 8 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 2656thin sample | 276 | 87.1% | 62 min | 1.09% | A |
| All United Airlines on SNA–DEN | 1,870 | 86.1% | 64 min | 0.37% | A+ |
| All carriers on SNA–DEN | 3,697 | 82.4% | 62 min | 0.41% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | 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 2025 at 79.5%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 69 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 202580 flights79.5%
- Oct–Dec 202568 flights92.6%
- Jan–Mar 202644 flights90.7%
- Apr–Jun 202684 flights88.0%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 2656 ranged from 81.4% on Thursday to 92.5% on Wednesday. With about 39 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.
Delay causes
Why UA 2656 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 69% of the 2,178 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.
- 69%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 8%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
69% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 2,178 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 27 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 2,178 delay minutes reported on UA 2656.
Cancellations sit at 1.09% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.36%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
7.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, 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. 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 three other city pairs in the data, including DEN to BOS (129), 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. 276 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: 87.1% on time and 1.09% 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 route84.9%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.