Flight number record
UA 218
United Airlines · Honolulu to Chicago
- Route
- HNL → ORD
- Departs
- 18:05
- Flights
- 364
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 10 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 218's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 102 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 361 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.82%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
4.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 364 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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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 16:00 (103 flights) and 17:15 (55 flights) next.
- Departs 18:05125 flights34.3%
- Departs 16:00103 flights28.3%
- Departs 17:1555 flights15.1%
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 18:05 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and UA 218 runs 20 points better at 87.5%. 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 218 next to HNL to ORD
Every carrier on HNL to ORD combined arrived on time 84.5% of the time across 540 flights, so UA 218 is 3 points ahead of it. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 9 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 218thin sample | 364 | 87.5% | 87 min | 0.82% | A+ |
| All United Airlines on HNL–ORD | 365 | 87.6% | 87 min | 0.82% | A+ |
| All carriers on HNL–ORD | 540 | 84.5% | 81 min | 0.74% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 218 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter UA 218 held fairly steady: 93.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 87.8% in Oct–Dec 2025, 84.1% in Jan–Mar 2026, 86.8% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 90.3% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 9 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights93.3%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights87.8%
- Jan–Mar 202689 flights84.1%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights86.8%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights90.3%
Scale runs 75% to 100%.
By weekday, UA 218 did best on Monday at 96.2% on time and worst on Friday at 78.0%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 18 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 218 runs when it is late
UA 218 often beats the schedule: 170 of 361 completed flights, 47%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 45 late arrivals split 13 under half an hour, 15 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 17 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early170 flights47.1%
- Within 15 min146 flights40.4%
- 15–29 min late13 flights3.6%
- 30–59 min late15 flights4.2%
- 1–2 hours late9 flights2.5%
- 2+ hours late8 flights2.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 361 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 54 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 21 still arrived on time. 12 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 218
The latest arrival of the period was on 29 January 2026, 9 hours 46 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 29 January 2026 | 9 hours 46 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 12 August 2026 | 6 hours 17 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 March 2026 | 4 hours 51 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 July 2026 | 3 hours 36 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 2 September 2025 | 3 hours 32 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 218 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 3,894 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,894 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 to one. The split is drawn from 3,894 delay minutes reported on UA 218.
Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, below the national 1.89% 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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: 87.5% on time and 0.82% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- Daniel K. Inouye International (HNL) 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
- 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.