Flight number record
UA 1046
United Airlines · Atlanta to Chicago
- Route
- ATL → ORD
- Departs
- 18:59
- Flights
- 320
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1046, check with United Airlines.
UA 1046 draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 320 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so UA 1046 runs 16 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 164 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
60.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 312 completed flights
Avg delay
90 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.50%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
14.1%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 320 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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.
Schedule
When UA 1046 flies
UA 1046 flies ATL to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:59, used on 55 of 320 flights, with 18:47 (47 flights) and 18:57 (43 flights) next.
- Departs 18:5955 flights17.2%
- Departs 18:4747 flights14.7%
- Departs 18:5743 flights13.4%
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 18:59 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and UA 1046 runs 7 points worse at 60.9%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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.
Against the route
UA 1046 next to ATL to ORD
Every carrier on ATL to ORD combined arrived on time 69.0% of the time across 6,493 flights, so UA 1046 is 8 points behind it. United flew 1,717 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 72.7% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight trails by 18 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1046thin sample | 320 | 60.9% | 90 min | 2.50% | D |
| All United Airlines on ATL–ORD | 1,717 | 72.7% | 92 min | 1.81% | C |
| All carriers on ATL–ORD | 6,493 | 69.0% | 83 min | 2.40% | C |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 1046 quarter by quarter
UA 1046 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 76.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 51.3%, a swing of 25 points on roughly 64 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 202530 flights76.7%
- Oct–Dec 202573 flights54.3%
- Jan–Mar 202686 flights60.7%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights65.2%
- Jul–Sep 202640 flights51.3%
Scale runs 45% to 80%.
By weekday, UA 1046 did best on Saturday at 75.0% on time and worst on Thursday at 46.7%. Each day rests on about 46 flights, so a gap of 28 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1046 runs when it is late
The 122 late arrivals split 47 under half an hour, 31 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 44 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early36 flights11.5%
- Within 15 min154 flights49.4%
- 15–29 min late47 flights15.1%
- 30–59 min late31 flights9.9%
- 1–2 hours late21 flights6.7%
- 2+ hours late23 flights7.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 312 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
9 of 69 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 13% of them. In the other direction, 62 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 ORD.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1046
The latest arrival of the period was on 10 March 2026, 18 hours 35 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 10 March 2026 | 18 hours 35 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 27 April 2026 | 16 hours 7 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 17 April 2026 | 15 hours 4 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 11 June 2026 | 5 hours 40 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 4 May 2026 | 5 hours 19 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why UA 1046 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 54% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%National Airspace System
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%Extreme weather
- 6%Carrier
Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 quarterly figures above are the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 10,986 delay minutes reported on UA 1046.
Cancellations run at 2.50%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
14.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 606 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 four other city pairs in the data, including ORD to MSP (17), SFO to ATL (16) and PBI to ORD (4), but none flew often enough under UA 1046 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ATL to ORD only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 320 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 1046
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on UA 1046: 2.50% of its 320 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs an hour and a half, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to ORD, every carrier and departure
- ORD to ATL, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 2738 on the same route57.6%
- United Airlines 516 on the same route70.8%
- Delta Air Lines 1477 on the same route72.9%
- Delta Air Lines 1147 on the same route79.0%
- Delta Air Lines 2879 on the same route45.6%
- Frontier Airlines 1441 on the same route72.7%
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) 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
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.