Flight number record
UA 1971
United Airlines · Houston to Las Vegas
- Route
- IAH → LAS
- Departs
- 14:20
- Flights
- 364
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1971, check with United Airlines.
UA 1971 earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 1971's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 81 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 362 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
7.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 364 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 1971 flies
UA 1971 flies IAH to LAS without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 14:20, used on 132 of 364 flights, with 14:25 (44 flights) and 14:26 (37 flights) next.
- Departs 14:20132 flights36.3%
- Departs 14:2544 flights12.1%
- Departs 14:2637 flights10.2%
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 14:20 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 71.9%, and UA 1971 runs 14 points better at 85.4%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
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Against the route
UA 1971 next to IAH to LAS
Every carrier on IAH to LAS combined arrived on time 82.8% of the time across 3,409 flights, so UA 1971 is 3 points ahead of it. United flew 2,598 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 85.2% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 7 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1971thin sample | 364 | 85.4% | 71 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| All United Airlines on IAH–LAS | 2,598 | 85.2% | 60 min | 0.27% | A+ |
| All carriers on IAH–LAS | 3,409 | 82.8% | 71 min | 0.85% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 1971 quarter by quarter
UA 1971 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 93.5% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 79.1%, a swing of 14 points on roughly 91 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.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights93.5%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights86.7%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights79.1%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights80.0%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1971 did best on Tuesday at 96.2% on time and worst on Monday at 75.5%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 21 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1971 runs when it is late
UA 1971 often beats the schedule: 157 of 362 completed flights, 43%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When UA 1971 is late it tends to be very late: 28 of its 53 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 8 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early157 flights43.4%
- Within 15 min152 flights42.0%
- 15–29 min late16 flights4.4%
- 30–59 min late9 flights2.5%
- 1–2 hours late20 flights5.5%
- 2+ hours late8 flights2.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 362 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
16 of 60 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 27% of them. 9 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1971
The latest arrival of the period was on 16 March 2026, 4 hours 47 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Three of the five worst days fell in March 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 16 March 2026 | 4 hours 47 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 31 March 2026 | 3 hours 19 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 September 2025 | 3 hours 9 minutes | Carrier |
| 1 May 2026 | 2 hours 57 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 March 2026 | 2 hours 56 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why UA 1971 runs late
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 3,769 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,769 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 to one. The split is drawn from 3,769 delay minutes reported on UA 1971.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
7.7% 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 1,222 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 three other city pairs in the data, including LAS to ORD (32), TPA to IAH (20) and LAS to LAX (14), but none flew often enough under UA 1971 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to IAH to LAS only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 364 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 1971
For a booking, UA 1971 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 85.4% on time and 0.00% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- IAH to LAS, every carrier and departure
- LAS to IAH, the return direction
- United Airlines 1799 on the same route88.4%
- United Airlines 1264 on the same route95.1%
- United Airlines 1524 on the same route89.2%
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- Harry Reid International (LAS) 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.