Flight profile · United Airlines
UA737
Seattle (SEA) to San Francisco (SFO) · scheduled 7:34 PM – 9:50 PM
How UA737 performs
1,089 operations, July 2023 – July 2026.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 1,089 operations, July 2023 – July 2026 · If UA737 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
What stands out
How UA737 compares to other flight numbers, not just to itself.
Which day you fly matters unusually much here, a wider weekday spread than 99% of 1,710 comparable flight numbers.
83.9% on time on a typical Tuesday, against 60.3% on a Friday.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · The one thing about this specific departure that ranks most extreme against every other published flight number, out of everything FlyerIntel checks — shown only when something clears a real statistical bar, not for every flight.
Where UA737 is right now
A live reading, only if you ask for it. It is not part of the reliability record above.
Ask for the position of UA737 right now, if receivers on the ground are hearing it. Nothing is requested until you press the button.
Against the rest of the route
| Flight or route | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe | Flights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA737 | 69.1% | 0.46% | -3 min | 10.9% | 1,089 |
| United Airlines on SEA → SFO | 71.5% | 0.80% | -4 min | 10.2% | 6,012 |
| All SEA → SFO flights | 68.7% | 1.02% | 0 min | 9.3% | 20,772 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
Why UA737 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for UA737 on SEA → SFO. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Does a late aircraft delay this flight?
How often the plane that flies UA737 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
When the aircraft came in 15 or more minutes late, UA737 pushed back an average of 44 minutes late; when it came in on time or early, an average of 7 minutes late.
Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into SEA just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 1,066 of 1,084 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.
Against the network at the same turn length
| Share of departures | Inbound landed 15+ late | Left 15+ late after a late inbound | Left 15+ late after an on-time inbound |
|---|---|---|---|
| UA737 | 21% | 71% | 15% |
| Network, same turn | 17% | 68% | 9% |
The schedule leaves a normal turn: enough time to clean and board if the aircraft is on time, little to spare if it is not.
The network row is every flight with a scheduled turn of 60 to 89 minutes. How often UA737’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is higher than the network’s and, once the aircraft was late, how often UA737 left 15 or more minutes late is about the same as the network’s.
More: Which Flight Numbers Pay for a Late Aircraft lists the flight numbers that pass a late aircraft on.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
From pushback to gate
When it leaves SEA late, does that still matter by the time it reaches SFO?
UA737 pushes back an average of 15.9 minutes late and reaches the gate at SFO an average of 13.1 minutes late. The 2.8 minutes between those two figures are slack the published schedule already carries, which is why a late pushback on this flight does not reliably become a late arrival. It spends 23.5 minutes on the taxiways at SEA, 2.9 minutes longer than a typical SEA departure in the same hour.
On arrival at SFO, UA737 spends 7.5 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 about what any arrival at SFO spends on the ground before reaching the gate.
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 SFO. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 29,917 departures from SEA scheduled in the clock hour UA737 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at SFO (436,060 flights), not just UA737’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
The hour it leaves SEA
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. UA737 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 29,917 departures from SEA are scheduled in the 7 PM–8 PM hour over the period, against 510,205 across the whole day.
UA737 is scheduled out of SEA at 7:34 PM, in the 7 PM–8 PM bank. Departures from SEA in that hour arrive on time 77.5% of the time against 79.1% across the airport’s whole day, so the hour UA737 leaves in is an ordinary one for SEA and explains nothing about its record either way.
The two airport figures cover every departure from SEA 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.
By day of week
Does UA737 run worse on particular days?
Tuesday is historically the most reliable day and Friday the least, a gap of 23.6 percentage points.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Days with fewer than 120 operations are not scored.
Other routes UA737 has flown
A flight number is a slot in a schedule, and carriers reassign it. These are the other city pairs this number served in the analysis period.
| Route | Operated | Flights | On time |
|---|---|---|---|
| SFO→ABQ San Francisco to Albuquerque | June 25, 2026 – July 31, 2026 | 33 | — |
| SFO→ORD San Francisco to Chicago | October 29, 2023 – June 24, 2026 | 84 | — |
| SFO→EWR San Francisco to Newark | May 23, 2024 – March 28, 2026 | 106 | 64.8% |
| SFO→BWI San Francisco to Baltimore | December 2–17, 2025 | 16 | — |
| SFO→MSY San Francisco to New Orleans | October 26–31, 2025 | 6 | — |
| SFO→AUS San Francisco to Austin | June 26, 2025 – July 31, 2025 | 26 | — |
| IAH→SFO Houston to San Francisco | May 22, 2025 – June 25, 2025 | 35 | — |
| SFO→TPA San Francisco to Tampa | December 19, 2024 – March 5, 2025 | 60 | — |
| SFO→MCI San Francisco to Kansas City | June 27, 2024 – August 18, 2024 | 53 | — |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route UA737 currently operates. Blending them would produce an average of two different flights.
When it goes wrong
The average describes a usual day. This is the day that ruins a connection.
63 min late
against a median of 3 min early
UA737 has an average that understates its risk: a typical arrival is 3 min early, but the worst tenth are 66 minutes worse than that. If the trip has something unmissable at the end of it, the median is the wrong number to plan against.
Percentiles over 1,089 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Other flights on this route
Same airports, same journey, different odds of arriving on time.
| Flight | Airline | On time | Median arrival | Operations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AS1166 | Alaska Airlines | 69.7% | 0 min early | 652 |
| UA737 this flight | United Airlines | 69.1% | 3 min early | 1,089 |
| AS1140 | Alaska Airlines | 65.4% | 5 min late | 694 |
| AS1284 | Alaska Airlines | 64.3% | 5 min late | 697 |
| AS1318 | Alaska Airlines | 64.0% | 6 min late | 707 |
| AS1132 | Alaska Airlines | 62.0% | 7 min late | 636 |
Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. UA737 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.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 1,089 records of UA737 operating SEA → SFO, published by the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics. A flight counts as delayed when it arrives 15 or more minutes after schedule. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and reported separately. Flight numbers are resolved as carrier plus number plus route, because the same number serves different routes over time.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: Most and Least Reliable Flight Numbers · The Delay You Inherit · Making Up Time in the Air
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