Flight number record

UA 1979

United Airlines · Newark to Tampa

Route: EWR → TPA
Departs: 07:00
Flights: 318
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1979, check with United Airlines.

UA 1979 earns an A. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 16 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 50 minutes. That rests on 318 flights, with a median arrival 16 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, UA 1979's record is 16 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 156 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

93.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 309 completed flights

Avg delay

48 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.52%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

0.6%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 318 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 16 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 1979 flies

UA 1979 flies EWR to TPA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:00, used on 119 of 318 flights, with 07:05 (62 flights) and 07:20 (53 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 07:00119 flights37.4%
Departs 07:0562 flights19.5%
Departs 07:2053 flights16.7%

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 07:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and UA 1979 runs 4 points better at 93.2%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

UA 1979 next to EWR to TPA

Every carrier on EWR to TPA combined arrived on time 80.8% of the time across 2,656 flights, so UA 1979 is 12 points ahead of it. United flew 2,370 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 81.4% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 14 points.

UA 1979 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 1979thin sample	318	93.2%	48 min	2.52%	A
All United Airlines on EWR–TPA	2,370	81.4%	69 min	2.03%	B
All carriers on EWR–TPA	2,656	80.8%	71 min	2.18%	B
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 1979 quarter by quarter

UA 1979 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 97.5% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 82.4%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 80 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 202582 flights97.5%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights93.2%
Jan–Mar 202653 flights82.4%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights95.6%

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

By weekday, UA 1979 ranged from 91.1% on Friday to 100.0% on Tuesday. With about 45 flights behind each day, a spread of 9 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why UA 1979 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 1,014 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
42%
Carrier
37%
Extreme weather
15%
Late-arriving aircraft
7%

Extreme weather accounts for 15% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the quarterly figures above are the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 1,014 delay minutes reported on UA 1979.

Cancellations run at 2.52%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 0.6% 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.

The 997 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The same number turns up on six other city pairs in the data, including TPA to IAH (94), IAH to PHX (21) and TPA to LAX (21), but none flew often enough under UA 1979 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to EWR to TPA only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 318 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 1979

For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on UA 1979: 2.52% of its 318 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs roughly 50 minutes, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.

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