Flight number record
UA 1209
United Airlines · Chicago to Newark
- Route
- ORD → EWR
- Departs
- 21:08
- Flights
- 288
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1209, check with United Airlines.
UA 1209 draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 288 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so UA 1209 runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 108 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 272 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.86%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
13.6%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 288 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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 70 of 288 flights, with 22:10 (50 flights) and 21:30 (46 flights) next.
- Departs 21:0870 flights24.3%
- Departs 22:1050 flights17.4%
- Departs 21:3046 flights16.0%
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 21:08 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.1%, and UA 1209 runs 4 points worse at 66.5%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
UA 1209 next to ORD to EWR
Every carrier on ORD to EWR combined arrived on time 69.8% of the time across 6,126 flights, so UA 1209 is 3 points behind it. United flew 4,415 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 72.0% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight trails by 12 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1209thin sample | 288 | 66.5% | 72 min | 4.86% | C− |
| All United Airlines on ORD–EWR | 4,415 | 72.0% | 89 min | 2.85% | C |
| All carriers on ORD–EWR | 6,126 | 69.8% | 87 min | 3.82% | C− |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | 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 2026 at 50.9%, a swing of 26 points on roughly 96 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 202521 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202584 flights65.9%
- Jan–Mar 202631 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights77.0%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights50.9%
Scale runs 40% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1209 ranged from 61.0% on Monday to 72.7% on Saturday. With about 41 flights behind each day, a spread of 12 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1209 runs when it is late
The 91 late arrivals split 32 under half an hour, 22 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 37 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early61 flights22.4%
- Within 15 min120 flights44.1%
- 15–29 min late32 flights11.8%
- 30–59 min late22 flights8.1%
- 1–2 hours late23 flights8.5%
- 2+ hours late14 flights5.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 272 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 121 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 37 still arrived on time. 7 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1209
The latest arrival of the period was on 3 July 2026, 8 hours 35 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 3 July 2026 | 8 hours 35 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 4 September 2025 | 8 hours 26 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 9 August 2026 | 5 hours 31 minutes | Carrier |
| 30 January 2026 | 4 hours 58 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 31 August 2026 | 3 hours 8 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 1209 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 6,540 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 15%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 6,540 delay minutes reported on UA 1209.
Cancellations run at 4.86%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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
13.6% 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 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.
The same number turns up on ten other city pairs in the data, including MCI to ORD (46), 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. 288 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: 4.86% of its 288 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.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to EWR, every carrier and departure
- EWR to ORD, the return direction
- United Airlines 563 on the same route90.6%
- United Airlines 534 on the same route56.3%
- United Airlines 2301 on the same route76.7%
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Newark Liberty International (EWR) 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
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.