Flight number record
UA 1696
United Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Houston
- Route
- FLL → IAH
- Departs
- 17:00
- Flights
- 305
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1696, check with United Airlines.
UA 1696 lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 305 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
78.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 303 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.33%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
8.6%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 305 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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 1696 flies
UA 1696 flies FLL to IAH without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:00, used on 101 of 305 flights, with 16:50 (58 flights) and 16:55 (35 flights) next.
- Departs 17:00101 flights33.1%
- Departs 16:5058 flights19.0%
- Departs 16:5535 flights11.5%
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 17:00 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and UA 1696 runs 11 points better at 78.5%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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 1696 next to FLL to IAH
Every carrier on FLL to IAH combined arrived on time 81.5% of the time across 2,919 flights, so UA 1696 is 3 points behind it. United flew 1,894 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 88.3% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, close to this flight's figure.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1696thin sample | 305 | 78.5% | 80 min | 0.33% | B+ |
| All United Airlines on FLL–IAH | 1,894 | 88.3% | 78 min | 0.63% | A+ |
| All carriers on FLL–IAH | 2,919 | 81.5% | 75 min | 1.30% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 1696 quarter by quarter
UA 1696 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 84.1% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 72.4%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 76 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.
- Oct–Dec 202566 flights78.8%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights84.1%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights76.9%
- Jul–Sep 202658 flights72.4%
Scale runs 65% to 90%.
By weekday, UA 1696 did best on Tuesday at 88.6% on time and worst on Saturday at 61.5%. Each day rests on about 44 flights, so a gap of 27 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1696 runs when it is late
UA 1696 often beats the schedule: 82 of 303 completed flights, 27%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 65 late arrivals split 19 under half an hour, 20 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 26 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early82 flights27.1%
- Within 15 min156 flights51.5%
- 15–29 min late19 flights6.3%
- 30–59 min late20 flights6.6%
- 1–2 hours late11 flights3.6%
- 2+ hours late15 flights5.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 303 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
16 of 56 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 29% of them. In the other direction, 25 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at IAH.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1696
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 March 2026, 8 hours 51 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 7 March 2026 | 8 hours 51 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 27 June 2026 | 5 hours 5 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 July 2026 | 3 hours 56 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 December 2025 | 3 hours 51 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 February 2026 | 3 hours 45 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why UA 1696 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 47% of the 5,189 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%National Airspace System
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
47% 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 2,440 minutes out of 5,189, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 5,189 delay minutes reported on UA 1696.
Cancellations are rare at 0.33%, 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
8.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 966 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 two other city pairs in the data, including IAH to MSP (160) and IAH to MSY (46), but none flew often enough under UA 1696 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to FLL to IAH only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 305 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 1696
For a booking, read UA 1696 as 78.5% on time with 0.33% cancelled over 305 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to IAH, every carrier and departure
- IAH to FLL, the return direction
- United Airlines 2162 on the same route83.6%
- United Airlines 2314 on the same route97.1%
- United Airlines 722 on the same route90.0%
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) 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.