Flight number record
UA 489
United Airlines · Denver to Houston
- Route
- DEN → IAH
- Departs
- 15:35
- Flights
- 327
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 489, check with United Airlines.
UA 489 sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 327 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
Key figures
On time
75.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 327 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
10.7%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 327 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.7% 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 489 flies
UA 489 flies DEN to IAH without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 15:35, used on 118 of 327 flights, with 15:40 (58 flights) and 15:41 (55 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 15:35118 flights36.1%
- Departs 15:4058 flights17.7%
- Departs 15:4155 flights16.8%
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 15:35 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and UA 489 runs 3 points better at 75.2%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
Against the route
UA 489 next to DEN to IAH
Every carrier on DEN to IAH combined arrived on time 78.2% of the time across 4,673 flights, so UA 489 is 3 points behind it. United flew 3,875 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 78.0% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 4 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 489thin sample | 327 | 75.2% | 65 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| All United Airlines on DEN–IAH | 3,875 | 78.0% | 62 min | 0.23% | B+ |
| All carriers on DEN–IAH | 4,673 | 78.2% | 62 min | 0.21% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 489 quarter by quarter
UA 489 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 80.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 60.0%, a swing of 20 points on roughly 82 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 202555 flights60.0%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights78.0%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights80.0%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights76.9%
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 489 did best on Friday at 85.1% on time and worst on Saturday at 70.2%. Each day rests on about 47 flights, so a gap of 15 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why UA 489 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 58% of the 5,247 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.
- 58%National Airspace System
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
58% 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 3,052 minutes out of 5,247, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 5,247 delay minutes reported on UA 489.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
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. 10.7% 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 861 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 nine other city pairs in the data, including SNA to DEN (139), MSP to DEN (45) and IAH to OMA (37), but none flew often enough under UA 489 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DEN to IAH only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 327 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 489
For a booking, read UA 489 as 75.2% on time with 0.00% cancelled over 327 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to IAH, every carrier and departure
- IAH to DEN, the return direction
- United Airlines 1720 on the same route89.6%
- United Airlines 320 on the same route96.4%
- United Airlines 475 on the same route73.6%
- United Airlines 2419 on the same route78.6%
- Frontier Airlines 2996 on the same route72.9%
- United Airlines 1829 on the same route69.9%
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) 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
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.