Flight number record
UA 2181
United Airlines · Houston to New York
- Route
- IAH → LGA
- Departs
- 12:00
- Flights
- 250
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2181, check with United Airlines.
UA 2181 draws a C+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 250 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so UA 2181 runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 110 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 243 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.80%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
15.2%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 250 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When UA 2181 flies
UA 2181 flies IAH to LGA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 12:00, used on 148 of 250 flights, with 12:03 (37 flights) and 12:15 (31 flights) next.
- Departs 12:00148 flights59.2%
- Departs 12:0337 flights14.8%
- Departs 12:1531 flights12.4%
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 12:00 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.3%, and UA 2181 runs 12 points worse at 66.3%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
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Against the route
UA 2181 next to IAH to LGA
Every carrier on IAH to LGA combined arrived on time 72.8% of the time across 3,991 flights, so UA 2181 is 7 points behind it. United flew 2,376 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 71.3% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight trails by 13 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 2181thin sample | 250 | 66.3% | 85 min | 0.80% | C+ |
| All United Airlines on IAH–LGA | 2,376 | 71.3% | 77 min | 1.47% | C |
| All carriers on IAH–LGA | 3,991 | 72.8% | 82 min | 2.93% | C |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 2181 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter UA 2181 held fairly steady: 63.0% in Oct–Dec 2025, 67.1% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 62.1% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 5 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202529 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202584 flights63.0%
- Jan–Mar 20265 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202670 flights67.1%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights62.1%
Scale runs 55% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 2181 did best on Wednesday at 74.3% on time and worst on Sunday at 55.6%. Each day rests on about 36 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 2181 runs when it is late
The 82 late arrivals split 20 under half an hour, 25 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 37 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early36 flights14.8%
- Within 15 min125 flights51.4%
- 15–29 min late20 flights8.2%
- 30–59 min late25 flights10.3%
- 1–2 hours late20 flights8.2%
- 2+ hours late17 flights7.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 243 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 68 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 5 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 19 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 LGA.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 2181
The latest arrival of the period was on 22 July 2026, 7 hours 29 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Three of the five worst days fell in July 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 22 July 2026 | 7 hours 29 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 11 August 2026 | 5 hours 53 minutes | Carrier |
| 15 June 2026 | 5 hours 21 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 18 July 2026 | 4 hours 44 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 15 July 2026 | 4 hours 42 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 2181 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 50% of the 6,987 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%National Airspace System
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
50% 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 3,524 minutes out of 6,987, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 6,987 delay minutes reported on UA 2181.
Cancellations are rare at 0.80%, 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
15.2% 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 1,416 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 ten other city pairs in the data, including LGA to ORD (62), IND to IAH (52) and SLC to SFO (34), but none flew often enough under UA 2181 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to IAH to LGA only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 250 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 2181
For a booking, UA 2181 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 15.2% 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
- IAH to LGA, every carrier and departure
- LGA to IAH, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1417 on the same route87.4%
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) 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.