Carrier route record
UASAN→EWR
United Airlines · San Diego to Newark
- Flights
- 1,229
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 79%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on SAN to EWR lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 1,229 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's SAN to EWR record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 40 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,189 completed flights
Avg delay
92 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.12%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
81.9%
Every carrier on SAN to EWR, 1,557 flights
These figures cover 1,229 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on SAN to EWR
United flew 1,229 of the 1,557 flights on SAN to EWR, most of the route. Its 81.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 81.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 84.0% to United at 81.3%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 328 | 84.0% | 79 min | 2.74% | B |
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,229 | 81.3% | 92 min | 2.12% | B |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on SAN to EWR
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 23 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am364 flights86.7%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm157 flights64.2%
- 2pm–5pm204 flights73.1%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am504 flights86.1%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 64.2% on time against 86.7% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 504 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on SAN to EWR through the year
August is the worst month at 67.2% on time, 28 points below April, the best at 95.6%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 122 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 73.4%, a spread of 14 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on SAN to EWR runs when it is late
United on SAN to EWR often beats the schedule: 490 of 1,189 completed flights, 41%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 222 late arrivals split 71 under half an hour, 59 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 92 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early490 flights41.2%
- Within 15 min477 flights40.1%
- 15–29 min late71 flights6.0%
- 30–59 min late59 flights5.0%
- 1–2 hours late53 flights4.5%
- 2+ hours late39 flights3.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,189 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
48 of 210 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 23% of them. In the other direction, 60 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 EWR.
The worst days
Worst days for United on SAN to EWR
The latest arrival of the period was on 11 March 2026, 11 hours 59 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. Three of the five worst days fell in August 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 11 March 2026 | 11 hours 59 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 9 August 2026 | 11 hours 37 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 14 August 2026 | 11 hours 30 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 27 August 2026 | 11 hours 16 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 19 December 2025 | 11 hours 12 minutes | Extreme weather |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
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 20,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%National Airspace System
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Extreme weather
- 18%Carrier
Extreme weather accounts for 21% 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 monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 3.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 20,431 reported delay minutes.
37% 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 7,639 minutes out of 20,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 2.12% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.14%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.7% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 2,425 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 return leg runs 80.1% on time across 1,229 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,229 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking United on SAN to EWR
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 95.6% on time and August 67.2%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,189 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SAN to EWR, every carrier
- United on EWR to SAN, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on SAN to EWR84.0%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- Newark Liberty International (EWR) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.