Flight number record
UA 1044
United Airlines · Chicago to Los Angeles
- Route
- ORD → LAX
- Departs
- 08:50
- Flights
- 267
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1044, check with United Airlines.
UA 1044 lands a B+, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 267 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
76.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 266 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.37%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
8.3%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 267 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Schedule
When UA 1044 flies
UA 1044 flies ORD to LAX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 08:50, used on 68 of 267 flights, with 09:05 (49 flights) and 09:01 (37 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 08:5068 flights25.5%
- Departs 09:0549 flights18.4%
- Departs 09:0137 flights13.9%
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 08:50 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and UA 1044 runs 7 points worse at 76.7%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
Against the route
UA 1044 next to ORD to LAX
Every carrier on ORD to LAX combined arrived on time 72.5% of the time across 6,961 flights, so UA 1044 is 4 points ahead of it. United flew 3,380 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 76.5% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 2 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1044thin sample | 267 | 76.7% | 60 min | 0.37% | B+ |
| All United Airlines on ORD–LAX | 3,380 | 76.5% | 69 min | 0.65% | B+ |
| All carriers on ORD–LAX | 6,961 | 72.5% | 73 min | 1.59% | C |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 1044 quarter by quarter
UA 1044 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 83.3% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 71.7%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 67 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
- Jul–Sep 202592 flights80.2%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights71.7%
- Jan–Mar 202642 flights83.3%
- Apr–Jun 202641 flights73.2%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1044 did best on Thursday at 89.5% on time and worst on Sunday at 65.8%. Each day rests on about 38 flights, so a gap of 24 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why UA 1044 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 47% of the 3,700 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.
- 47%Carrier
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 47%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,749 of the 3,700 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,700 delay minutes reported on UA 1044.
Cancellations are rare at 0.37%, below the national 1.81% 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
8.3% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,744 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 nine other city pairs in the data, including IAH to ORD (111), ORD to MCI (31) and IND to ORD (27), but none flew often enough under UA 1044 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ORD to LAX only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 267 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 1044
For a booking, read UA 1044 as 76.7% on time with 0.37% cancelled over 267 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to LAX, every carrier and departure
- LAX to ORD, the return direction
- United Airlines 1363 on the same route82.6%
- United Airlines 1967 on the same route68.1%
- United Airlines 576 on the same route73.6%
- United Airlines 2361 on the same route87.6%
- American Airlines 1979 on the same route70.8%
- American Airlines 3194 on the same route51.6%
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) 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
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
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.