Flight number record

UA 1976

United Airlines · Boston to Houston

Route: BOS → IAH
Departs: 13:30
Flights: 279
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1976, check with United Airlines.

UA 1976 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 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 279 flights, with a median arrival 19 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, UA 1976's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 107 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

88.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 274 completed flights

Avg delay

89 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.43%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

3.6%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 279 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Schedule

When UA 1976 flies

UA 1976 flies BOS to IAH without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 13:30, used on 53 of 279 flights, with 13:35 (49 flights) and 13:37 (40 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 13:3053 flights19.0%
Departs 13:3549 flights17.6%
Departs 13:3740 flights14.3%

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 13:30 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.8%, and UA 1976 runs 10 points better at 88.3%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

UA 1976 next to BOS to IAH

Every carrier on BOS to IAH combined arrived on time 81.8% of the time across 2,027 flights, so UA 1976 is 7 points ahead of it. United flew 1,567 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.8% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 9 points.

UA 1976 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 1976thin sample	279	88.3%	89 min	1.43%	A
All United Airlines on BOS–IAH	1,567	83.8%	71 min	1.47%	B
All carriers on BOS–IAH	2,027	81.8%	67 min	1.43%	B
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 1976 quarter by quarter

UA 1976 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 94.0% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 83.3%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 70 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 202549 flights85.4%
Oct–Dec 202550 flights94.0%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights91.9%
Apr–Jun 202690 flights83.3%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 1976 did best on Sunday at 94.9% on time and worst on Tuesday at 82.1%. Each day rests on about 40 flights, so a gap of 13 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 1976 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 2,848 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
46%
Carrier
28%
National Airspace System
26%
Extreme weather
0%

46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 2,848 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 46 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 2,848 delay minutes reported on UA 1976.

Cancellations sit at 1.43% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.36%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.6% 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.

At 1,597 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 three other city pairs in the data, including IAH to PNS (187), ORD to BOS (21) and IAH to SFO (6), but none flew often enough under UA 1976 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to BOS to IAH only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 279 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 1976

For a booking, UA 1976 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 88.3% on time and 1.43% 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