Flight number record
UA 1253
United Airlines · Newark to West Palm Beach
- Route
- EWR → PBI
- Departs
- 07:30
- Flights
- 283
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1253, check with United Airlines.
UA 1253 earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 283 flights, with a median arrival 16 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 1253's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 105 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 277 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.77%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
3.6%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 283 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 16 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Schedule
When UA 1253 flies
UA 1253 flies EWR to PBI without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:30, used on 53 of 283 flights, with 07:55 (37 flights) and 06:42 (35 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 07:3053 flights18.7%
- Departs 07:5537 flights13.1%
- Departs 06:4235 flights12.4%
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 07:30 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and UA 1253 runs level with that at 88.1%. 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 1253 next to EWR to PBI
Every carrier on EWR to PBI combined arrived on time 77.1% of the time across 3,611 flights, so UA 1253 is 11 points ahead of it. United flew 2,770 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.1% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 9 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1253thin sample | 283 | 88.1% | 65 min | 1.77% | A |
| All United Airlines on EWR–PBI | 2,770 | 79.1% | 69 min | 1.95% | B |
| All carriers on EWR–PBI | 3,611 | 77.1% | 69 min | 2.52% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 1253 quarter by quarter
UA 1253 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 95.5% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 76.7%, a swing of 19 points on roughly 71 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 202577 flights90.7%
- Oct–Dec 202588 flights76.7%
- Jan–Mar 202668 flights95.5%
- Apr–Jun 202650 flights94.0%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1253 did best on Wednesday at 100.0% on time and worst on Sunday at 79.5%. Each day rests on about 40 flights, so a gap of 21 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why UA 1253 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 2,158 reported delay minutes.
- 40%National Airspace System
- 24%Carrier
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 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 2.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 2,158 delay minutes reported on UA 1253.
Cancellations sit at 1.77% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.35%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.6% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 1,024 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 three other city pairs in the data, including DEN to IAH (33), DEN to MKE (21) and EWR to MCO (14), but none flew often enough under UA 1253 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to EWR to PBI only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 283 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 1253
For a booking, read UA 1253 as 88.1% on time with 1.77% cancelled over 283 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- EWR to PBI, every carrier and departure
- PBI to EWR, the return direction
- JetBlue Airways 2143 on the same route71.1%
- JetBlue Airways 143 on the same route74.3%
- United Airlines 1344 on the same route79.5%
- United Airlines 1797 on the same route74.2%
- 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
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.