Flight number record

UA 1617

United Airlines · Houston to Chicago

Route: IAH → ORD
Departs: 08:23
Flights: 260
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1617, check with United Airlines.

UA 1617 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 13 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 50 minutes. That rests on 260 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, UA 1617's record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 127 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

90.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 257 completed flights

Avg delay

50 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.38%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

3.1%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 260 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 1617 flies

UA 1617 flies IAH to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 08:23, used on 92 of 260 flights, with 08:15 (68 flights) and 08:05 (41 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 08:2392 flights35.4%
Departs 08:1568 flights26.2%
Departs 08:0541 flights15.8%

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 08:23 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and UA 1617 runs 6 points better at 90.3%. 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 1617 next to IAH to ORD

Every carrier on IAH to ORD combined arrived on time 74.8% of the time across 6,080 flights, so UA 1617 is 16 points ahead of it. United flew 4,007 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 78.2% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 11 points.

UA 1617 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 1617thin sample	260	90.3%	50 min	0.38%	A+
All United Airlines on IAH–ORD	4,007	78.2%	70 min	0.60%	B+
All carriers on IAH–ORD	6,080	74.8%	82 min	1.48%	C
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 1617 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter UA 1617 held fairly steady: 95.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 87.8% in Oct–Dec 2025, 90.2% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 89.0% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202543 flights95.3%
Oct–Dec 202541 flights87.8%
Jan–Mar 202685 flights90.2%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights89.0%

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 1617 ranged from 86.1% on Sunday to 97.3% on Wednesday. With about 37 flights behind each day, a spread of 11 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why UA 1617 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 60% of the 1,258 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.

National Airspace System
60%
Carrier
27%
Late-arriving aircraft
8%
Extreme weather
4%

60% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 759 minutes out of 1,258, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 1,258 delay minutes reported on UA 1617.

Cancellations are rare at 0.38%, 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.1% 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 925 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 seven other city pairs in the data, including ORD to PHL (117), ORD to MSN (42) and MCO to IAD (37), but none flew often enough under UA 1617 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to IAH to ORD only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 260 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 1617

For a booking, UA 1617 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 90.3% on time and 0.38% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.

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