UA489

UA489 arrived on time 71.1% of the time, against 76.8% for all DEN → IAH flights, so this departure is 5.7 percentage points worse than the route as a whole. Against United Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 6.1 points worse.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 965 operations, July 2023 – July 2026 · If UA489 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026

Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for UA489 on DEN → IAH. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026

The aircraft flying UA489 came in 15 or more minutes late on 11% of the departures where its previous flight is known. There are not enough departures in both groups to say how the flight left after a late one and after an on-time one.

Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into DEN just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 914 of 962 departures in all. A departure is left out when that flight is unknown, was cancelled or diverted, or the aircraft had sat for more than 12 hours. A flight the airline cancelled never left and is not in the count, and one flown by a substitute aircraft is matched to the aircraft that flew it, not to the one first planned.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026

UA489 pushes back an average of 12.8 minutes late and arrives a further 2.0 minutes behind that. This departure loses ground between the two gates rather than recovering it, so a late pushback here tends to get worse on the way, not better. It spends 19.0 minutes on the taxiways at DEN, 1.0 minutes longer than a typical DEN departure in the same hour.

On arrival at IAH, UA489 spends 15.6 min taxiing from touchdown to the gate — ground time a connecting passenger sits through before they can even leave the aircraft, on top of however late the flight itself ran. That is 4.9 minutes longer than a typical IAH arrival (10.7 min).

Departure delay is averaged over every pushback and arrival delay over every completed arrival, so the two counts differ by the flights that never reached IAH. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 52,619 departures from DEN scheduled in the clock hour UA489 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at IAH (359,471 flights), not just UA489’s own. More on taxi time.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026

UA489 is scheduled out of DEN at 3:40 PM, in the 3 PM–4 PM bank. Departures from DEN in that hour arrive on time 72.9% of the time against 76.0% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 3.1 points worse before anything about this particular flight is considered.

The two airport figures cover every departure from DEN to every destination, so they describe the slot rather than this journey — the like-for-like comparison against the route is above. Hours are scheduled local, and a number whose schedule moved between banks inside the period has no single hour and is not described here at all. Why the hour matters.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Days with fewer than 120 operations are not scored.

Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route UA489 currently operates. Blending them would produce an average of two different flights.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026

Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. UA489 is placed in the same ordering rather than left out of it; the rows around it are the most punctual departures on the route, not all of them, so this is a comparison and not a rank. Schedules change; confirm the departure still operates before booking around this.

• UA1829 DEN→IAH United Airlines on the same route, departs 1:25 PM, on time 71.1%
• UA475 DEN→IAH United Airlines on the same route, departs 7:20 PM, on time 72.0%
• F93206 DEN→IAH Frontier Airlines on the same route, departs 7:00 AM, on time 80.4%