Flight number record
UA 1617
United Airlines · Houston to Chicago
- Route
- IAH → ORD
- Departs
- 08:23
- Flights
- 309
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 12 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 55 minutes. That rests on 309 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 1617's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 122 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 305 completed flights
Avg delay
53 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.65%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
3.0%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 309 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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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 309 flights, with 08:05 (82 flights) and 08:15 (55 flights) next.
- Departs 08:2392 flights29.8%
- Departs 08:0582 flights26.5%
- Departs 08:1555 flights17.8%
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 08:23 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and UA 1617 runs 6 points better at 89.5%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
UA 1617 next to IAH to ORD
Every carrier on IAH to ORD combined arrived on time 75.1% of the time across 6,142 flights, so UA 1617 is 14 points ahead of it. United flew 4,084 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 78.8%, which this flight beats by 11 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1617thin sample | 309 | 89.5% | 53 min | 0.65% | A+ |
| All United Airlines on IAH–ORD | 4,084 | 78.2% | 69 min | 0.59% | B+ |
| All carriers on IAH–ORD | 6,142 | 75.1% | 83 min | 1.50% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 1617 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter UA 1617 held fairly steady: 96.7% in Jul–Sep 2025, 87.8% in Oct–Dec 2025, 90.2% in Jan–Mar 2026, 89.0% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 86.9% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 10 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights96.7%
- Oct–Dec 202541 flights87.8%
- Jan–Mar 202685 flights90.2%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights89.0%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights86.9%
Scale runs 80% to 100%.
By weekday, UA 1617 ranged from 86.0% on Tuesday to 95.5% on Thursday. With about 44 flights behind each day, a spread of 10 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1617 runs when it is late
UA 1617 often beats the schedule: 127 of 305 completed flights, 42%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 32 late arrivals split 11 under half an hour, 12 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 9 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early127 flights41.6%
- Within 15 min146 flights47.9%
- 15–29 min late11 flights3.6%
- 30–59 min late12 flights3.9%
- 1–2 hours late6 flights2.0%
- 2+ hours late3 flights1.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 305 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
4 of 21 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 19% of them. 15 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1617
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 December 2025, 2 hours 31 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 7 December 2025 | 2 hours 31 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 11 August 2026 | 2 hours 31 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 12 May 2026 | 2 hours 5 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 April 2026 | 1 hour 54 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 April 2026 | 1 hour 53 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why UA 1617 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 64% of the 1,696 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 64%National Airspace System
- 30%Carrier
- 5%Late-arriving aircraft
64% 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 1,090 minutes out of 1,696, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 1,696 delay minutes reported on UA 1617.
Cancellations are rare at 0.65%, 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 3.0% 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 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.
The same number turns up on six other city pairs in the data, including ORD to LGA (65), ORD to MSN (63) and ORD to PHL (55), 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. 309 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: 89.5% on time and 0.65% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- IAH to ORD, every carrier and departure
- ORD to IAH, the return direction
- United Airlines 2616 on the same route86.9%
- United Airlines 787 on the same route71.8%
- United Airlines 2124 on the same route84.8%
- United Airlines 2182 on the same route88.5%
- United Airlines 2197 on the same route66.3%
- United Airlines 2417 on the same route76.8%
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) 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
- 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.