Flight number record
UA 1990
United Airlines · Austin to Chicago
- Route
- AUS → ORD
- Departs
- 17:20
- Flights
- 255
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1990, check with United Airlines.
UA 1990 earns a D, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 57.2% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 20 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. Late arrivals average a little over an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 255 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so UA 1990 runs 20 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 201 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
57.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 250 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.57%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
16.0%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 255 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When UA 1990 flies
UA 1990 flies AUS to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:20, used on 86 of 255 flights, with 17:24 (34 flights) next.
- Departs 17:2086 flights33.7%
- Departs 17:2434 flights13.3%
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 17:20 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and UA 1990 runs 11 points worse at 57.2%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
UA 1990 next to AUS to ORD
Every carrier on AUS to ORD combined arrived on time 72.4% of the time across 3,182 flights, so UA 1990 is 15 points behind it. United flew 1,549 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 74.1% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight trails by 22 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1990thin sample | 255 | 57.2% | 78 min | 1.57% | D |
| All United Airlines on AUS–ORD | 1,549 | 74.1% | 83 min | 1.29% | C |
| All carriers on AUS–ORD | 3,182 | 72.4% | 93 min | 2.11% | C |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 1990 quarter by quarter
UA 1990 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 61.5% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 49.0%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 64 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 202521 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202550 flights49.0%
- Jan–Mar 202632 flights54.8%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights61.5%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights56.9%
Scale runs 40% to 65%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1990 did best on Saturday at 78.1% on time and worst on Monday at 42.1%. Each day rests on about 36 flights, so a gap of 36 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1990 runs when it is late
The 107 late arrivals split 48 under half an hour, 19 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 40 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early31 flights12.4%
- Within 15 min112 flights44.8%
- 15–29 min late48 flights19.2%
- 30–59 min late19 flights7.6%
- 1–2 hours late18 flights7.2%
- 2+ hours late22 flights8.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 250 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 62 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 5 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 50 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 ORD.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1990
The latest arrival of the period was on 26 March 2026, 6 hours 23 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. Three of the five worst days fell in June 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 26 March 2026 | 6 hours 23 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 10 June 2026 | 6 hours 1 minute | National Airspace System |
| 11 June 2026 | 5 hours 38 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 7 June 2026 | 5 hours 13 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 2 April 2026 | 5 hours 1 minute | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why UA 1990 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 63% of the 8,356 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 63%National Airspace System
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
63% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 5,288 minutes out of 8,356, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 8,356 delay minutes reported on UA 1990.
Cancellations sit at 1.57% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.39%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
16.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 977 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 seven other city pairs in the data, including LAX to AUS (173), IAD to LAX (31) and ORD to DTW (16), but none flew often enough under UA 1990 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to AUS to ORD only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 255 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 1990
For a booking, UA 1990 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 16.0% of its completed flights arrived an hour or more late, which a short layover will not absorb. If the onward flight is on a separate ticket, the risk sits with you.
Related
Where to go next
- AUS to ORD, every carrier and departure
- ORD to AUS, the return direction
- United Airlines 1878 on the same route89.1%
- American Airlines 1726 on the same route78.1%
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) 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
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.