Flight number record
UA 1976
United Airlines · Boston to Houston
- Route
- BOS → IAH
- Departs
- 13:37
- Flights
- 291
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 291 flights, with a median arrival 20 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 1976's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 112 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 286 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.37%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
3.5%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 291 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 20 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 1976 flies
UA 1976 flies BOS to IAH without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 13:37, used on 80 of 291 flights, with 13:30 (53 flights) and 11:42 (37 flights) next.
- Departs 13:3780 flights27.5%
- Departs 13:3053 flights18.2%
- Departs 11:4237 flights12.7%
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 13:37 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.3%, and UA 1976 runs 10 points better at 88.5%. 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 1976 next to BOS to IAH
Every carrier on BOS to IAH combined arrived on time 80.1% of the time across 2,018 flights, so UA 1976 is 8 points ahead of it. United flew 1,550 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 82.3% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 10 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1976thin sample | 291 | 88.5% | 87 min | 1.37% | A |
| All United Airlines on BOS–IAH | 1,550 | 82.3% | 75 min | 1.29% | B |
| All carriers on BOS–IAH | 2,018 | 80.1% | 69 min | 1.68% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | 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 73 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 202550 flights94.0%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights91.9%
- Apr–Jun 202690 flights83.3%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights86.7%
Scale runs 75% to 100%.
By weekday, UA 1976 ranged from 82.9% on Friday to 90.5% on Sunday. With about 42 flights behind each day, a spread of 8 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1976 runs when it is late
UA 1976 often beats the schedule: 168 of 286 completed flights, 59%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 33 late arrivals split 13 under half an hour, 10 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 10 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early168 flights58.7%
- Within 15 min85 flights29.7%
- 15–29 min late13 flights4.5%
- 30–59 min late10 flights3.5%
- 1–2 hours late3 flights1.0%
- 2+ hours late7 flights2.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 286 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
6 of 24 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 25% of them. In the other direction, 15 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 1976
The latest arrival of the period was on 29 January 2026, 8 hours 30 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 29 January 2026 | 8 hours 30 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 June 2026 | 6 hours 57 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 12 June 2026 | 4 hours 45 minutes | Carrier |
| 30 April 2026 | 3 hours 56 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 1 May 2026 | 3 hours 13 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why UA 1976 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 2,876 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 27%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,876 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 39 to one. The split is drawn from 2,876 delay minutes reported on UA 1976.
Cancellations sit at 1.37% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.34%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.5% 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.
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 (126), IAH to SFO (31) and ORD to BOS (21), 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. 291 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: 88.5% on time and 1.37% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- BOS to IAH, every carrier and departure
- IAH to BOS, the return direction
- United Airlines 226 on the same route93.3%
- JetBlue Airways 2033 on the same route74.0%
- Boston Logan International (BOS) 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
- 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.