Flight number record
UA 1990
United Airlines · Austin to Chicago
- Route
- AUS → ORD
- Departs
- 17:29
- Flights
- 252
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1990, check with United Airlines.
UA 1990 draws a D+. Roughly one flight in two arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 252 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so UA 1990 runs 18 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 182 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
59.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 249 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.40%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
14.9%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 252 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.9% 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 1990 flies
UA 1990 flies AUS to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:29, used on 48 of 252 flights, with 17:24 (34 flights) and 17:25 (31 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 17:2948 flights19.0%
- Departs 17:2434 flights13.5%
- Departs 17:2531 flights12.3%
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 17:29 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 1990 runs 9 points worse at 59.4%. 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 1990 next to AUS to ORD
Every carrier on AUS to ORD combined arrived on time 72.1% of the time across 3,166 flights, so UA 1990 is 13 points behind it. United flew 1,470 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 74.9% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 20 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1990thin sample | 252 | 59.4% | 79 min | 0.40% | D+ |
| All United Airlines on AUS–ORD | 1,470 | 74.9% | 80 min | 1.02% | C |
| All carriers on AUS–ORD | 3,166 | 72.1% | 90 min | 2.15% | C |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 1990 quarter by quarter
UA 1990 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 65.4% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 49.0%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 63 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 202579 flights65.4%
- Oct–Dec 202550 flights49.0%
- Jan–Mar 202632 flights54.8%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights61.5%
Scale runs 40% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1990 did best on Saturday at 74.2% on time and worst on Monday at 47.4%. Each day rests on about 36 flights, so a gap of 27 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why UA 1990 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 66% of the 7,950 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.
- 66%National Airspace System
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
66% 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 5,271 minutes out of 7,950, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 7,950 delay minutes reported on UA 1990.
Cancellations are rare at 0.40%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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. 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 seven other city pairs in the data, including LAX to AUS (152), 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. 252 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. 14.9% 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 route87.9%
- American Airlines 1726 on the same route80.3%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.