Flight number record

UA 1980

United Airlines · Houston to Austin

Route: IAH → AUS
Departs: 18:50
Flights: 263
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1980, check with United Airlines.

UA 1980 lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 263 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.

On time

77.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 261 completed flights

Avg delay

85 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.76%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

8.4%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 263 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Schedule

When UA 1980 flies

UA 1980 flies IAH to AUS without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:50, used on 167 of 263 flights, with 18:23 (42 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 18:50167 flights63.5%
Departs 18:2342 flights16.0%

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 18:50 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 1980 runs 10 points better at 77.8%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

Against the route

UA 1980 next to IAH to AUS

Every carrier on IAH to AUS combined arrived on time 79.4% of the time across 2,675 flights, so UA 1980 is 2 points behind it. United flew 2,609 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.4% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, close to this flight's figure.

UA 1980 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 1980thin sample	263	77.8%	85 min	0.76%	B+
All United Airlines on IAH–AUS	2,609	79.4%	65 min	0.80%	B+
All carriers on IAH–AUS	2,675	79.4%	66 min	0.79%	B+
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 1980 quarter by quarter

UA 1980 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 84.1% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 64.3%, a swing of 20 points on roughly 66 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 202556 flights64.3%
Oct–Dec 202567 flights76.1%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights84.1%
Apr–Jun 202650 flights84.0%

Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 1980 did best on Tuesday at 89.7% on time and worst on Sunday at 71.8%. Each day rests on about 38 flights, so a gap of 18 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 1980 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 4,955 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
40%
Carrier
39%
National Airspace System
12%
Extreme weather
9%

40% 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 4,955 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 4,955 delay minutes reported on UA 1980.

Cancellations are rare at 0.76%, below the national 1.81% 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

8.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

The same number turns up on seven other city pairs in the data, including SAN to IAH (98), SFO to SAN (51) and LGA to IAH (42), but none flew often enough under UA 1980 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to IAH to AUS only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 263 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 1980

For a booking, read UA 1980 as 77.8% on time with 0.76% cancelled over 263 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular 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