Flight number record

UA 2862

United Airlines · Washington to San Francisco

Route: IAD → SFO
Departs: 15:00
Flights: 365
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2862, check with United Airlines.

UA 2862 lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.

On time

79.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 364 completed flights

Avg delay

76 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.27%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

8.5%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.5% 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 2862 flies

UA 2862 flies IAD to SFO without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 15:00, used on 117 of 365 flights, with 14:36 (98 flights) and 15:25 (52 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 15:00117 flights32.1%
Departs 14:3698 flights26.8%
Departs 15:2552 flights14.2%

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 15:00 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and UA 2862 runs 8 points better at 79.9%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

UA 2862 next to IAD to SFO

Every carrier on IAD to SFO combined arrived on time 78.2% of the time across 2,787 flights, so UA 2862 is 2 points ahead of it. United flew 2,688 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 78.6% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, close to this flight's figure.

UA 2862 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 2862	365	79.9%	76 min	0.27%	B+
All United Airlines on IAD–SFO	2,688	78.6%	74 min	0.89%	B+
All carriers on IAD–SFO	2,787	78.2%	74 min	0.90%	B+
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 2862 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter UA 2862 held fairly steady: 79.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 77.2% in Oct–Dec 2025, 77.5% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 85.7% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 9 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights79.3%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights77.2%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights77.5%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights85.7%

Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 2862 did best on Sunday at 90.2% on time and worst on Thursday at 73.1%. 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 2862 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 43% of the 5,573 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
43%
Late-arriving aircraft
28%
Carrier
20%
Extreme weather
9%

43% 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 2,375 minutes out of 5,573, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 5,573 delay minutes reported on UA 2862.

Cancellations are rare at 0.27%, 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

8.5% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 2,418 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 five other city pairs in the data, including SFO to TPA (36), MCO to IAD (21) and ORD to MCO (21), but none flew often enough under UA 2862 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to IAD to SFO 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 2862

For a booking, read UA 2862 as 79.9% on time with 0.27% cancelled over 365 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.

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