Flight number record
UA 1421
United Airlines · Chicago to Fort Lauderdale
- Route
- ORD → FLL
- Departs
- 07:00
- Flights
- 341
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1421, check with United Airlines.
UA 1421 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 35 minutes. That rests on 341 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 1421's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 109 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 340 completed flights
Avg delay
37 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.29%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
1.5%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 341 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Schedule
When UA 1421 flies
UA 1421 flies ORD to FLL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:00, used on 252 of 341 flights, with 07:06 (53 flights) and 07:03 (36 flights) next.
- Departs 07:00252 flights73.9%
- Departs 07:0653 flights15.5%
- Departs 07:0336 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 07:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and UA 1421 runs level with that at 88.2%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Against the route
UA 1421 next to ORD to FLL
Every carrier on ORD to FLL combined arrived on time 70.8% of the time across 3,517 flights, so UA 1421 is 17 points ahead of it. United flew 1,522 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 76.8% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 9 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1421thin sample | 341 | 88.2% | 37 min | 0.29% | A+ |
| All United Airlines on ORD–FLL | 1,522 | 76.8% | 66 min | 0.79% | B+ |
| All carriers on ORD–FLL | 3,517 | 70.8% | 74 min | 2.25% | C |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 1421 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter UA 1421 held fairly steady: 88.2% in Oct–Dec 2025, 88.6% in Jan–Mar 2026, 88.2% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 83.9% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 5 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202529 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202585 flights88.2%
- Jan–Mar 202680 flights88.6%
- Apr–Jun 202685 flights88.2%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights83.9%
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1421 did best on Wednesday at 92.5% on time and worst on Saturday at 76.9%. Each day rests on about 49 flights, so a gap of 16 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1421 runs when it is late
UA 1421 often beats the schedule: 98 of 340 completed flights, 29%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 29 of the 40 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 5 reached an hour or more.
- 15+ min early98 flights28.8%
- Within 15 min202 flights59.4%
- 15–29 min late29 flights8.5%
- 30–59 min late6 flights1.8%
- 1–2 hours late3 flights0.9%
- 2+ hours late2 flights0.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 340 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Only 15 of 340 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1421
The latest arrival of the period was on 8 November 2025, 3 hours 11 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 8 November 2025 | 3 hours 11 minutes | Carrier |
| 1 May 2026 | 2 hours 54 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 13 September 2025 | 1 hour 53 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 February 2026 | 1 hour 22 minutes | Carrier |
| 24 May 2026 | 1 hour 2 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why UA 1421 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 54% of the 1,494 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%National Airspace System
- 36%Carrier
- 7%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 541 of the 1,494 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,494 delay minutes reported on UA 1421.
Cancellations are rare at 0.29%, below the national 1.89% 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 1.5% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 1,182 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 five other city pairs in the data, including FLL to IAD (159), FLL to EWR (19) and EWR to CHS (7), but none flew often enough under UA 1421 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ORD to FLL only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 341 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 1421
For a booking, UA 1421 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 88.2% on time and 0.29% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to FLL, every carrier and departure
- FLL to ORD, the return direction
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.