Flight number record
UA 1287
United Airlines · Newark to Atlanta
- Route
- EWR → ATL
- Departs
- 21:10
- Flights
- 321
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1287, check with United Airlines.
UA 1287 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 321 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so UA 1287 runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 119 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 306 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.67%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
14.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 321 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When UA 1287 flies
UA 1287 flies EWR to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 21:10, used on 55 of 321 flights, with 19:52 (48 flights) and 20:33 (34 flights) next.
- Departs 21:1055 flights17.1%
- Departs 19:5248 flights15.0%
- Departs 20:3334 flights10.6%
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 21:10 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.1%, and UA 1287 runs 5 points worse at 65.4%. 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 1287 next to EWR to ATL
Every carrier on EWR to ATL combined arrived on time 76.9% of the time across 6,252 flights, so UA 1287 is 12 points behind it. United flew 2,024 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 76.0% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight trails by 13 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1287thin sample | 321 | 65.4% | 77 min | 4.67% | C− |
| All United Airlines on EWR–ATL | 2,024 | 76.0% | 84 min | 2.67% | B |
| All carriers on EWR–ATL | 6,252 | 76.9% | 89 min | 3.85% | B− |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 1287 quarter by quarter
UA 1287 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 75.3% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 30.3%, a swing of 45 points on roughly 80 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 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202575 flights56.0%
- Jan–Mar 202685 flights75.3%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights75.0%
- Jul–Sep 202640 flights30.3%
Scale runs 20% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1287 did best on Tuesday at 75.6% on time and worst on Sunday at 47.6%. 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 1287 runs when it is late
UA 1287 often beats the schedule: 92 of 306 completed flights, 30%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 106 late arrivals split 27 under half an hour, 34 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 45 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early92 flights30.1%
- Within 15 min108 flights35.3%
- 15–29 min late27 flights8.8%
- 30–59 min late34 flights11.1%
- 1–2 hours late25 flights8.2%
- 2+ hours late20 flights6.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 306 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
15 of 107 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. 14 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1287
The latest arrival of the period was on 14 June 2026, 5 hours 57 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Three of the five worst days fell in June 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 14 June 2026 | 5 hours 57 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 5 August 2026 | 5 hours 38 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 12 June 2026 | 5 hours 11 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 25 September 2025 | 4 hours 31 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 June 2026 | 3 hours 32 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why UA 1287 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 58% of the 8,126 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
58% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,126 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 58 to one. The split is drawn from 8,126 delay minutes reported on UA 1287.
Cancellations run at 4.67%, 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
14.7% 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 746 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 six other city pairs in the data, including SLC to EWR (72), TPA to EWR (56) and PHX to EWR (30), but none flew often enough under UA 1287 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to EWR to ATL only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 321 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 1287
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on UA 1287: 4.67% of its 321 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
- EWR to ATL, every carrier and departure
- ATL to EWR, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 2353 on the same route83.2%
- Frontier Airlines 4601 on the same route77.0%
- Delta Air Lines 2397 on the same route81.0%
- Frontier Airlines 1157 on the same route64.1%
- Delta Air Lines 1673 on the same route85.1%
- Delta Air Lines 2325 on the same route80.9%
- Newark Liberty International (EWR) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) 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.