Flight number record
UA 2856
United Airlines · Newark to Dallas-Fort Worth
- Route
- EWR → DFW
- Departs
- 18:29
- Flights
- 301
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2856, check with United Airlines.
UA 2856 sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 301 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so UA 2856 runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 43 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 292 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.66%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
12.7%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 301 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.7% 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 2856 flies
UA 2856 flies EWR to DFW without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:29, used on 37 of 301 flights, with 19:13 (31 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 18:2937 flights12.3%
- Departs 19:1331 flights10.3%
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 18:29 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 2856 runs 5 points better at 73.3%. 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 2856 next to EWR to DFW
Every carrier on EWR to DFW combined arrived on time 79.2% of the time across 3,571 flights, so UA 2856 is 6 points behind it. United flew 1,758 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 80.6% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 6 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 2856thin sample | 301 | 73.3% | 79 min | 2.66% | C |
| All United Airlines on EWR–DFW | 1,758 | 80.6% | 77 min | 2.62% | B |
| All carriers on EWR–DFW | 3,571 | 79.2% | 85 min | 3.36% | B− |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 2856 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter UA 2856 held fairly steady: 75.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 68.7% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 73.6% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202529 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights75.3%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights68.7%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights73.6%
Scale runs 60% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 2856 did best on Wednesday at 80.5% on time and worst on Friday at 65.9%. Each day rests on about 43 flights, so a gap of 15 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why UA 2856 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 6,191 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%National Airspace System
- 21%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
48% 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 6,191 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 6,191 delay minutes reported on UA 2856.
Cancellations run at 2.66%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
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. 12.7% 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.
The 1,372 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 EWR to JAX (49), RDU to EWR (21) and IAH to EWR (14), but none flew often enough under UA 2856 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to EWR to DFW only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 301 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 2856
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on UA 2856: 2.66% of its 301 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs a little over an hour, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- EWR to DFW, every carrier and departure
- DFW to EWR, the return direction
- American Airlines 2728 on the same route93.7%
- United Airlines 454 on the same route85.1%
- Newark Liberty International (EWR) delay statistics
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) 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.