Flight number record
UA 1490
United Airlines · Portland to Chicago
- Route
- PDX → ORD
- Departs
- 23:59
- Flights
- 265
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1490, check with United Airlines.
UA 1490 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 10 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 265 flights, with a median arrival 19 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 1490's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 97 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 262 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.75%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
3.8%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 265 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 19 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.
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Schedule
When UA 1490 flies
UA 1490 flies PDX to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 23:59, used on 144 of 265 flights, with 23:40 (79 flights) and 23:55 (38 flights) next.
- Departs 23:59144 flights54.3%
- Departs 23:4079 flights29.8%
- Departs 23:5538 flights14.3%
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 23:59 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.1%, and UA 1490 runs 17 points better at 87.0%. 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 1490 next to PDX to ORD
Every carrier on PDX to ORD combined arrived on time 79.2% of the time across 2,814 flights, so UA 1490 is 8 points ahead of it. United flew 1,413 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 81.4% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 8 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1490thin sample | 265 | 87.0% | 59 min | 0.75% | A+ |
| All United Airlines on PDX–ORD | 1,413 | 81.4% | 65 min | 0.71% | B+ |
| All carriers on PDX–ORD | 2,814 | 79.2% | 76 min | 1.00% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 1490 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter UA 1490 held fairly steady: 84.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 90.2% in Jan–Mar 2026, 89.5% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 85.0% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 20256 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202589 flights84.3%
- Jan–Mar 202642 flights90.2%
- Apr–Jun 202687 flights89.5%
- Jul–Sep 202641 flights85.0%
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1490 did best on Wednesday at 93.8% on time and worst on Sunday at 80.0%. Each day rests on about 38 flights, so a gap of 14 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1490 runs when it is late
UA 1490 often beats the schedule: 155 of 262 completed flights, 59%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 34 late arrivals split 11 under half an hour, 13 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 10 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early155 flights59.2%
- Within 15 min73 flights27.9%
- 15–29 min late11 flights4.2%
- 30–59 min late13 flights5.0%
- 1–2 hours late6 flights2.3%
- 2+ hours late4 flights1.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 262 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 44 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 14 still arrived on time. Only 4 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1490
The latest arrival of the period was on 21 February 2026, 4 hours 8 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On four of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 21 February 2026 | 4 hours 8 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 June 2026 | 2 hours 48 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 April 2026 | 2 hours 46 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 February 2026 | 2 hours 32 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 July 2026 | 1 hour 47 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 1490 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 62% of the 2,012 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 62%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
62% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,012 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 62 to one. The split is drawn from 2,012 delay minutes reported on UA 1490.
Cancellations are rare at 0.75%, 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 3.8% 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.
At 1,739 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The same number turns up on seven other city pairs in the data, including IAH to AUS (24), LAS to IAH (24) and IAD to IAH (23), but none flew often enough under UA 1490 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to PDX to ORD only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 265 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 1490
For a booking, UA 1490 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 87.0% on time and 0.75% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- PDX to ORD, every carrier and departure
- ORD to PDX, the return direction
- Alaska Airlines 324 on the same route74.1%
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) 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.