Flight number record

UA 589

United Airlines · San Francisco to Santa Ana

Route: SFO → SNA
Departs: 19:10
Flights: 323
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 589, check with United Airlines.

UA 589 earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 12 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 323 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, UA 589's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 115 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

89.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 321 completed flights

Avg delay

56 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.31%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

2.2%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 323 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 589 flies

UA 589 flies SFO to SNA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 19:10, used on 227 of 323 flights, with 18:55 (37 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 19:10227 flights70.3%
Departs 18:5537 flights11.5%

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 19:10 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 589 runs 21 points better at 89.1%. 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 589 next to SFO to SNA

Every carrier on SFO to SNA combined arrived on time 80.3% of the time across 4,726 flights, so UA 589 is 9 points ahead of it. United flew 1,011 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.9% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 10 points.

UA 589 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 589thin sample	323	89.1%	56 min	0.31%	A+
All United Airlines on SFO–SNA	1,011	83.9%	51 min	0.49%	B+
All carriers on SFO–SNA	4,726	80.3%	60 min	1.18%	B
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 589 quarter by quarter

UA 589 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 93.3% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 82.4%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 81 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 202591 flights93.3%
Oct–Dec 202551 flights82.4%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights93.3%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights84.4%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 589 did best on Wednesday at 93.5% on time and worst on Friday at 80.4%. Each day rests on about 46 flights, so a gap of 13 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 589 runs late

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 1,967 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
35%
Extreme weather
32%
Carrier
26%
National Airspace System
7%

Extreme weather accounts for 32% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the quarterly figures above are the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 5.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 1,967 delay minutes reported on UA 589.

Cancellations are rare at 0.31%, 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.

UA 589 is not only a SFO to SNA flight. It also flew IAH to SFO (300 flights, 80.3% 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. 323 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.

Other routes flown as UA 589
Also flown as	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
IAH to SFOthin sample	300	80.3%	75 min	0.00%	B+

What to do with this

Booking UA 589

For a booking, UA 589 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 89.1% on time and 0.31% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single 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