Flight number record

UA 1216

United Airlines · Houston to Omaha

Route: IAH → OMA
Departs: 20:03
Flights: 277
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1216, check with United Airlines.

UA 1216 sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 277 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so UA 1216 runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 81 extra late arrivals.

On time

69.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 275 completed flights

Avg delay

70 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.36%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

12.0%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 277 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.0% 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 1216 flies

UA 1216 flies IAH to OMA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 20:03, used on 73 of 277 flights, with 19:53 (48 flights) and 20:20 (39 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 20:0373 flights26.4%
Departs 19:5348 flights17.3%
Departs 20:2039 flights14.1%

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 20:03 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.5%, and UA 1216 runs level with that at 69.5%. 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 1216 next to IAH to OMA

Every carrier on IAH to OMA combined arrived on time 75.0% of the time across 829 flights, so UA 1216 is 6 points behind it. United flew 720 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 74.3% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 10 points.

UA 1216 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 1216thin sample	277	69.5%	70 min	0.36%	C+
All United Airlines on IAH–OMA	720	74.3%	71 min	0.28%	C+
All carriers on IAH–OMA	829	75.0%	71 min	0.24%	B+
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 1216 quarter by quarter

UA 1216 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 79.8% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 55.4%, a swing of 24 points on roughly 92 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 202585 flights55.4%
Oct–Dec 202514 flights—
Jan–Mar 202689 flights79.8%
Apr–Jun 202689 flights69.7%

Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 1216 did best on Tuesday at 79.5% on time and worst on Sunday at 55.0%. Each day rests on about 40 flights, so a gap of 25 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 1216 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 5,871 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
54%
Carrier
29%
National Airspace System
15%
Extreme weather
2%

54% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 5,871 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 34 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 5,871 delay minutes reported on UA 1216.

Cancellations are rare at 0.36%, 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.0% 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 781 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 five other city pairs in the data, including MIA to IAH (244), SMF to IAH (105) and IAH to SAN (36), but none flew often enough under UA 1216 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to IAH to OMA only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 277 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 1216

For a booking, UA 1216 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 12.0% of its completed flights arrived an hour or more late, which a short layover will not absorb. If the onward flight is on a separate ticket, the risk sits with you.

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