Flight number record
UA 2853
United Airlines · San Antonio to Denver
- Route
- SAT → DEN
- Departs
- 08:53
- Flights
- 334
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2853, check with United Airlines.
UA 2853 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 8 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 334 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 2853's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 80 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 327 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.10%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
4.6%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 334 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 2853 flies
UA 2853 flies SAT to DEN without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 08:53, used on 74 of 334 flights, with 08:30 (62 flights) and 08:45 (51 flights) next.
- Departs 08:5374 flights22.2%
- Departs 08:3062 flights18.6%
- Departs 08:4551 flights15.3%
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 08:53 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and UA 2853 runs level with that at 85.3%. 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 2853 next to SAT to DEN
Every carrier on SAT to DEN combined arrived on time 82.1% of the time across 3,063 flights, so UA 2853 is 3 points ahead of it. United flew 1,197 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.4% 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 2853thin sample | 334 | 85.3% | 93 min | 2.10% | A |
| All United Airlines on SAT–DEN | 1,197 | 83.4% | 79 min | 0.67% | B+ |
| All carriers on SAT–DEN | 3,063 | 82.1% | 69 min | 0.52% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 2853 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter UA 2853 held fairly steady: 83.6% in Oct–Dec 2025, 85.1% in Jan–Mar 2026, 86.7% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 84.7% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 3 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202524 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202567 flights83.6%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights85.1%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights86.7%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights84.7%
Scale runs 75% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 2853 did best on Sunday at 95.7% on time and worst on Wednesday at 75.0%. Each day rests on about 48 flights, so a gap of 21 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 2853 runs when it is late
The 48 late arrivals split 17 under half an hour, 16 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 15 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early76 flights23.2%
- Within 15 min203 flights62.1%
- 15–29 min late17 flights5.2%
- 30–59 min late16 flights4.9%
- 1–2 hours late4 flights1.2%
- 2+ hours late11 flights3.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 327 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
7 of 41 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. 14 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 2853
The latest arrival of the period was on 27 July 2026, 10 hours 24 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in January 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 27 July 2026 | 10 hours 24 minutes | Carrier |
| 1 January 2026 | 9 hours 22 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 October 2025 | 6 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
| 31 January 2026 | 4 hours 46 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 January 2026 | 4 hours 20 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why UA 2853 runs late
Carrier accounts for 72% of the 4,484 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 72%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 6%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 72%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,207 of the 4,484 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,484 delay minutes reported on UA 2853.
Cancellations sit at 2.10% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.6% 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 794 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 two other city pairs in the data, including DEN to IAD (179) and DEN to MIA (19), but none flew often enough under UA 2853 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to SAT to DEN only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 334 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 2853
For a booking, read UA 2853 as 85.3% on time with 2.10% cancelled over 334 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- SAT to DEN, every carrier and departure
- DEN to SAT, the return direction
- United Airlines 2479 on the same route73.4%
- San Antonio International (SAT) 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
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.