Flight number record
UA 2086
United Airlines · Houston to Columbus
- Route
- IAH → CMH
- Departs
- 20:13
- Flights
- 349
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2086, check with United Airlines.
UA 2086 sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 349 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
74.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 344 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.43%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
7.0%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 349 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 3 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 2086 flies
UA 2086 flies IAH to CMH without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 20:13, used on 70 of 349 flights, with 18:30 (66 flights) and 18:50 (52 flights) next.
- Departs 20:1370 flights20.1%
- Departs 18:3066 flights18.9%
- Departs 18:5052 flights14.9%
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 20:13 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.1%, and UA 2086 runs 4 points better at 74.4%. 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 2086 next to IAH to CMH
Every carrier on IAH to CMH combined arrived on time 78.6% of the time across 528 flights, so UA 2086 is 4 points behind it. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight trails by 4 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 2086thin sample | 349 | 74.4% | 51 min | 1.43% | C |
| All United Airlines on IAH–CMH | 523 | 78.4% | 59 min | 0.96% | B+ |
| All carriers on IAH–CMH | 528 | 78.6% | 59 min | 0.95% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 2086 quarter by quarter
UA 2086 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 82.6% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 60.0%, a swing of 23 points on roughly 87 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 202529 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202590 flights72.2%
- Jan–Mar 202689 flights82.6%
- Apr–Jun 202685 flights71.4%
- Jul–Sep 202656 flights60.0%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 2086 did best on Saturday at 84.6% on time and worst on Friday at 67.3%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 17 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 2086 runs when it is late
The 88 late arrivals split 36 under half an hour, 28 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 24 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early66 flights19.2%
- Within 15 min190 flights55.2%
- 15–29 min late36 flights10.5%
- 30–59 min late28 flights8.1%
- 1–2 hours late17 flights4.9%
- 2+ hours late7 flights2.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 344 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
13 of 81 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 16% of them. In the other direction, 20 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 CMH.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 2086
The latest arrival of the period was on 22 October 2025, 3 hours 21 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 22 October 2025 | 3 hours 21 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 15 March 2026 | 3 hours 7 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 27 July 2026 | 2 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 June 2026 | 2 hours 26 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 December 2025 | 2 hours 16 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 2086 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 4,509 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
49% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 4,509 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 19 to one. The split is drawn from 4,509 delay minutes reported on UA 2086.
Cancellations sit at 1.43% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
7.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 986 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.
UA 2086 is not only a IAH to CMH flight. It also flew LAX to IAH (261 flights, 85.8% on time) often enough to be scored on its own. Airlines attach one number to several legs of an aircraft's day, and each leg keeps its own record here, so check which city pair is on your booking before reading a rate.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 349 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.
| Also flown as | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LAX to IAHthin sample | 261 | 85.8% | 55 min | 0.00% | A+ |
What to do with this
Booking UA 2086
For a booking, read UA 2086 as 74.4% on time with 1.43% cancelled over 349 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) 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.