Flight number record
UA 471
United Airlines · San Antonio to Washington
- Route
- SAT → IAD
- Departs
- 07:00
- Flights
- 276
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 471, check with United Airlines.
UA 471 earns an A+. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 18 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 276 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 471's record is 18 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 180 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
95.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 273 completed flights
Avg delay
102 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.72%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
2.2%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 276 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Schedule
When UA 471 flies
UA 471 flies SAT to IAD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:00, used on 103 of 276 flights, with 07:05 (40 flights) and 07:07 (36 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 07:00103 flights37.3%
- Departs 07:0540 flights14.5%
- Departs 07:0736 flights13.0%
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 07:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and UA 471 runs 6 points better at 95.6%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
Against the route
UA 471 next to SAT to IAD
Every carrier on SAT to IAD combined arrived on time 93.7% of the time across 641 flights, so UA 471 is 2 points ahead of it. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 17 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 471thin sample | 276 | 95.6% | 102 min | 0.72% | A+ |
| All United Airlines on SAT–IAD | 641 | 93.7% | 80 min | 0.62% | A+ |
| All carriers on SAT–IAD | 641 | 93.7% | 80 min | 0.62% | A+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 471 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter UA 471 held fairly steady: 93.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 95.2% in Oct–Dec 2025, 96.0% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 96.4% in Apr–Jun 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 202530 flights93.3%
- Oct–Dec 202585 flights95.2%
- Jan–Mar 202677 flights96.0%
- Apr–Jun 202684 flights96.4%
Scale runs 85% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 471 ranged from 93.2% on Monday to 97.6% on Sunday. With about 39 flights behind each day, a spread of 4 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Delay causes
Why UA 471 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 54% of the 1,229 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.
- 54%Carrier
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%Extreme weather
- 6%National Airspace System
The largest share of delay minutes, 54%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 662 of the 1,229 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,229 delay minutes reported on UA 471.
Cancellations are rare at 0.72%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.2% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 1,362 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.
UA 471 is not only a SAT to IAD flight. It also flew IAD to ATL (276 flights, 85.5% on time) often enough to be scored on its own. Airlines attach one number to several legs of an aircraft's day, and each leg keeps its own record here, so check which city pair is on your booking before reading a rate.
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.
| Also flown as | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IAD to ATLthin sample | 276 | 85.5% | 88 min | 0.36% | A+ |
What to do with this
Booking UA 471
For a booking, UA 471 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 95.6% on time and 0.72% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- San Antonio International (SAT) delay statistics
- Washington Dulles International (IAD) 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.