Flight number record

UA 698

United Airlines · San Francisco to Newark

Route: SFO → EWR
Departs: 21:30
Flights: 276
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 698, check with United Airlines.

UA 698 lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 276 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, UA 698's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 60 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 269 completed flights

Avg delay

71 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.54%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

7.8%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 276 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 698 flies

UA 698 flies SFO to EWR without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 21:30, used on 113 of 276 flights, with 21:15 (84 flights) and 21:35 (41 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 21:30113 flights40.9%
Departs 21:1584 flights30.4%
Departs 21:3541 flights14.9%

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 21:30 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.5%, and UA 698 runs 13 points better at 83.6%. 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 698 next to SFO to EWR

Every carrier on SFO to EWR combined arrived on time 76.4% of the time across 4,401 flights, so UA 698 is 7 points ahead of it. United flew 3,790 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 74.8% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 5 points.

UA 698 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 698thin sample	276	83.6%	71 min	2.54%	B
All United Airlines on SFO–EWR	3,790	74.8%	82 min	2.24%	C
All carriers on SFO–EWR	4,401	76.4%	80 min	2.04%	B
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 698 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter UA 698 held fairly steady: 84.8% in Oct–Dec 2025, 81.4% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 85.9% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 5 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 20256 flights—
Oct–Dec 202592 flights84.8%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights81.4%
Apr–Jun 202688 flights85.9%

Scale runs 75% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 698 did best on Tuesday at 92.5% on time and worst on Sunday at 76.3%. Each day rests on about 39 flights, so a gap of 16 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 698 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 3,136 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
51%
Carrier
41%
National Airspace System
8%

51% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 3,136 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 51 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 3,136 delay minutes reported on UA 698.

Cancellations run at 2.54%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

7.8% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 2,565 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The same number turns up on three other city pairs in the data, including DCA to SFO (86), ONT to SFO (47) and ORD to ONT (3), but none flew often enough under UA 698 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to SFO to EWR only.

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.

What to do with this

Booking UA 698

For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on UA 698: 2.54% of its 276 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs a little over an hour, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.

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