Flight number record
UA 789
United Airlines · Denver to Washington
- Route
- DEN → DCA
- Departs
- 09:35
- Flights
- 256
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 789, check with United Airlines.
UA 789 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 14 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 50 minutes. That rests on 256 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 789's record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 136 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 253 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.39%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
2.0%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 256 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Schedule
When UA 789 flies
UA 789 flies DEN to DCA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 09:35, used on 156 of 256 flights, with 09:30 (69 flights) next.
- Departs 09:35156 flights60.9%
- Departs 09:3069 flights27.0%
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 09:35 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and UA 789 runs 7 points better at 90.9%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
UA 789 next to DEN to DCA
Every carrier on DEN to DCA combined arrived on time 80.6% of the time across 1,347 flights, so UA 789 is 10 points ahead of it. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 12 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 789thin sample | 256 | 90.9% | 51 min | 0.39% | A+ |
| All United Airlines on DEN–DCAthin sample | 364 | 88.6% | 59 min | 0.27% | A+ |
| All carriers on DEN–DCA | 1,347 | 80.6% | 70 min | 0.67% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 789 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter UA 789 held fairly steady: 87.6% in Jan–Mar 2026, 93.4% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 89.8% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Oct–Dec 202514 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights87.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights93.4%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights89.8%
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 789 did best on Monday at 94.6% on time and worst on Friday at 78.4%. Each day rests on about 37 flights, so a gap of 16 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 789 runs when it is late
UA 789 often beats the schedule: 120 of 253 completed flights, 47%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 23 late arrivals split 7 under half an hour, 11 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 5 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early120 flights47.4%
- Within 15 min110 flights43.5%
- 15–29 min late7 flights2.8%
- 30–59 min late11 flights4.3%
- 1–2 hours late3 flights1.2%
- 2+ hours late2 flights0.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 253 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 24 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 8 still arrived on time. 7 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 789
The latest arrival of the period was on 1 February 2026, 3 hours 19 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in March 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 1 February 2026 | 3 hours 19 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 June 2026 | 2 hours 17 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 16 March 2026 | 1 hour 19 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 8 March 2026 | 1 hour 12 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 March 2026 | 1 hour 7 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why UA 789 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 54% of the 1,180 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%National Airspace System
- 28%Carrier
- 18%Late-arriving aircraft
54% 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 642 minutes out of 1,180, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 1,180 delay minutes reported on UA 789.
Cancellations are rare at 0.39%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.0% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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.
The 1,476 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.
The same number turns up on five other city pairs in the data, including DEN to AUS (83), AUS to IAH (46) and TUL to DEN (31), but none flew often enough under UA 789 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DEN to DCA only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 256 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 789
For a booking, UA 789 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 90.9% on time and 0.39% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to DCA, every carrier and departure
- DCA to DEN, the return direction
- Frontier Airlines 690 on the same route65.7%
- Frontier Airlines 686 on the same route92.6%
- Frontier Airlines 688 on the same route76.0%
- Denver International (DEN) 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
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.