Flight number record

UA 1209

United Airlines · Chicago to Newark

Route: ORD → EWR
Departs: 21:08
Flights: 258
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1209, check with United Airlines.

UA 1209 sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 10 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 258 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so UA 1209 runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 96 extra late arrivals.

On time

68.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 250 completed flights

Avg delay

71 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.71%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

13.2%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 258 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.2% 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 1209 flies

UA 1209 flies ORD to EWR without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 21:08, used on 83 of 258 flights, with 22:10 (50 flights) and 21:23 (35 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 21:0883 flights32.2%
Departs 22:1050 flights19.4%
Departs 21:2335 flights13.6%

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 21:08 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.5%, and UA 1209 runs 3 points worse at 68.0%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

Against the route

UA 1209 next to ORD to EWR

Every carrier on ORD to EWR combined arrived on time 69.4% of the time across 6,044 flights, so UA 1209 is about level with it. United flew 4,391 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 71.3% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 11 points.

UA 1209 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 1209thin sample	258	68.0%	71 min	2.71%	C
All United Airlines on ORD–EWR	4,391	71.3%	86 min	2.37%	C
All carriers on ORD–EWR	6,044	69.4%	83 min	3.26%	C−
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 1209 quarter by quarter

UA 1209 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 77.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 57.7%, a swing of 19 points on roughly 86 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 202552 flights57.7%
Oct–Dec 202584 flights65.9%
Jan–Mar 202631 flights—
Apr–Jun 202691 flights77.0%

Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 1209 did best on Tuesday at 74.3% on time and worst on Monday at 56.8%. Each day rests on about 37 flights, so a gap of 18 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 1209 runs late

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 5,702 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
40%
Carrier
25%
Extreme weather
23%
National Airspace System
12%

Extreme weather accounts for 23% 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 3.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 5,702 delay minutes reported on UA 1209.

Cancellations run at 2.71%, against 1.81% 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

The 719 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The same number turns up on nine other city pairs in the data, including MCI to ORD (58), PHL to ORD (40) and LGA to ORD (37), but none flew often enough under UA 1209 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ORD to EWR only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 258 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 1209

For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on UA 1209: 2.71% of its 258 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs a little over an hour, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures