Flight number record
UA 654
United Airlines · Houston to Washington
- Route
- IAH → DCA
- Departs
- 12:00
- Flights
- 314
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 654, check with United Airlines.
UA 654 lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 314 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
77.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 310 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.64%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
6.8%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 314 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 4 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.
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Schedule
When UA 654 flies
UA 654 flies IAH to DCA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 12:00, used on 183 of 314 flights, with 11:55 (126 flights) next.
- Departs 12:00183 flights58.3%
- Departs 11:55126 flights40.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 12:00 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.3%, and UA 654 runs level with that at 77.7%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
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Against the route
UA 654 next to IAH to DCA
Every carrier on IAH to DCA combined arrived on time 75.3% of the time across 3,337 flights, so UA 654 is 2 points ahead of it. United flew 2,385 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 76.7% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, close to this flight's figure.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 654thin sample | 314 | 77.7% | 57 min | 0.64% | B+ |
| All United Airlines on IAH–DCA | 2,385 | 76.7% | 69 min | 0.67% | B+ |
| All carriers on IAH–DCA | 3,337 | 75.3% | 75 min | 2.31% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 654 quarter by quarter
UA 654 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 85.1% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 71.2%, a swing of 14 points on roughly 79 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 20256 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202567 flights77.6%
- Jan–Mar 202689 flights85.1%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights74.7%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights71.2%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 654 did best on Tuesday at 90.9% on time and worst on Friday at 64.4%. Each day rests on about 45 flights, so a gap of 27 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 654 runs when it is late
The 69 late arrivals split 25 under half an hour, 23 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 21 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early59 flights19.0%
- Within 15 min182 flights58.7%
- 15–29 min late25 flights8.1%
- 30–59 min late23 flights7.4%
- 1–2 hours late15 flights4.8%
- 2+ hours late6 flights1.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 310 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 52 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 4 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 21 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DCA.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 654
The latest arrival of the period was on 6 March 2026, 5 hours 56 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 6 March 2026 | 5 hours 56 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 10 June 2026 | 3 hours 9 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 July 2026 | 3 hours 2 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 15 June 2026 | 2 hours 58 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 1 May 2026 | 2 hours 42 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 654 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 3,925 reported delay minutes.
- 40%National Airspace System
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
40% 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 1,582 minutes out of 3,925, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 3,925 delay minutes reported on UA 654.
Cancellations are rare at 0.64%, below the national 1.89% 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
6.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,208 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.
UA 654 is not only a IAH to DCA flight. It also flew LAX to IAH (253 flights, 94.9% 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. 314 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LAX to IAHthin sample | 253 | 94.9% | 44 min | 0.00% | A+ |
What to do with this
Booking UA 654
For a booking, read UA 654 as 77.7% on time with 0.64% cancelled over 314 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- IAH to DCA, every carrier and departure
- DCA to IAH, the return direction
- United Airlines 1627 on the same route67.0%
- United Airlines 2224 on the same route71.3%
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.