Flight number record

UA 654

United Airlines · Houston to Washington

Route: IAH → DCA
Departs: 12:00
Flights: 302
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 654, check with United Airlines.

UA 654 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 302 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.

On time

75.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 297 completed flights

Avg delay

64 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.33%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

8.1%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 302 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.1% 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 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 302 flights, with 11:55 (114 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 12:00183 flights60.6%
Departs 11:55114 flights37.7%

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 12:00 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.8%, and UA 654 runs 3 points worse at 75.8%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

UA 654 next to IAH to DCA

Every carrier on IAH to DCA combined arrived on time 74.8% of the time across 3,202 flights, so UA 654 is about level with it. United flew 2,413 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 75.2% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 3 points.

UA 654 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 654thin sample	302	75.8%	64 min	0.33%	B+
All United Airlines on IAH–DCA	2,413	75.2%	70 min	0.79%	B+
All carriers on IAH–DCA	3,202	74.8%	73 min	1.81%	C
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	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 2025 at 59.6%, a swing of 25 points on roughly 76 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 flights59.6%
Oct–Dec 202567 flights77.6%
Jan–Mar 202689 flights85.1%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights74.7%

Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 654 did best on Tuesday at 95.3% on time and worst on Friday at 65.1%. Each day rests on about 43 flights, so a gap of 30 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

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 4,611 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
35%
Late-arriving aircraft
34%
Carrier
28%
Extreme weather
4%

35% 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 1,596 minutes out of 4,611, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 4,611 delay minutes reported on UA 654.

Cancellations are rare at 0.33%, 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

8.1% 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 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. 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 three other city pairs in the data, including LAX to IAH (249), DCA to ORD (200) and ORD to SAT (25), but none flew often enough under UA 654 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to IAH to DCA only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 302 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 654

For a booking, read UA 654 as 75.8% on time with 0.33% cancelled over 302 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