Flight number record

UA 218

United Airlines · Honolulu to Chicago

Route: HNL → ORD
Departs: 18:05
Flights: 364
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 218, check with United Airlines.

UA 218 earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, UA 218's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 110 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

88.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 360 completed flights

Avg delay

108 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.10%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

4.7%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 364 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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 218 flies

UA 218 flies HNL to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:05, used on 125 of 364 flights, with 17:15 (117 flights) and 16:50 (47 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 18:05125 flights34.3%
Departs 17:15117 flights32.1%
Departs 16:5047 flights12.9%

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 18:05 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 218 runs 20 points better at 88.6%. 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 218 next to HNL to ORD

Every carrier on HNL to ORD combined arrived on time 85.2% of the time across 540 flights, so UA 218 is 3 points ahead of it. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 10 points.

UA 218 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 218thin sample	364	88.6%	108 min	1.10%	A
All United Airlines on HNL–ORD	365	88.6%	108 min	1.10%	A
All carriers on HNL–ORD	540	85.2%	92 min	0.93%	A+
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 218 quarter by quarter

UA 218 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 95.6% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 84.1%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 91 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 202592 flights95.6%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights87.8%
Jan–Mar 202689 flights84.1%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights86.8%

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

By weekday, UA 218 did best on Wednesday at 94.2% on time and worst on Sunday at 80.8%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 13 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 218 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 4,408 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
31%
Late-arriving aircraft
29%
Extreme weather
27%
National Airspace System
13%

Extreme weather accounts for 27% 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 4.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 4,408 delay minutes reported on UA 218.

Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% 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.

At 4,243 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including BOS to SJC (1), but none flew often enough under UA 218 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to HNL to ORD only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 364 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 218

For a booking, UA 218 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 88.6% on time and 1.10% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single 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