Flight number record
UA 2197
United Airlines · Houston to Chicago
- Route
- IAH → ORD
- Departs
- 18:40
- Flights
- 297
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2197, check with United Airlines.
UA 2197 draws a C+. About one flight in three 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 297 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so UA 2197 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 291 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.34%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
12.0%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 297 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When UA 2197 flies
UA 2197 flies IAH to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:40, used on 107 of 297 flights, with 18:44 (47 flights) and 18:45 (46 flights) next.
- Departs 18:40107 flights36.0%
- Departs 18:4447 flights15.8%
- Departs 18:4546 flights15.5%
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 18:40 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and UA 2197 runs level with that at 66.3%. 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 2197 next to IAH to ORD
Every carrier on IAH to ORD combined arrived on time 75.1% of the time across 6,142 flights, so UA 2197 is 9 points behind it. United flew 4,084 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 78.2% 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 2197thin sample | 297 | 66.3% | 73 min | 0.34% | C+ |
| All United Airlines on IAH–ORD | 4,084 | 78.2% | 69 min | 0.59% | B+ |
| All carriers on IAH–ORD | 6,142 | 75.1% | 83 min | 1.50% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 2197 quarter by quarter
UA 2197 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 76.4% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 45.0%, a swing of 31 points on roughly 99 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 202524 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202530 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights76.4%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights61.8%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights45.0%
Scale runs 35% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 2197 did best on Tuesday at 73.2% on time and worst on Friday at 58.5%. Each day rests on about 42 flights, so a gap of 15 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 2197 runs when it is late
The 98 late arrivals split 42 under half an hour, 21 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 35 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early58 flights19.9%
- Within 15 min135 flights46.4%
- 15–29 min late42 flights14.4%
- 30–59 min late21 flights7.2%
- 1–2 hours late16 flights5.5%
- 2+ hours late19 flights6.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 291 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 69 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 5 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 34 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 ORD.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 2197
The latest arrival of the period was on 27 April 2026, 5 hours 45 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 27 April 2026 | 5 hours 45 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 31 March 2026 | 5 hours 15 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 10 June 2026 | 4 hours 56 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 3 July 2026 | 4 hours 24 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 24 June 2026 | 4 hours 14 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why UA 2197 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 49% of the 7,148 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 49%National Airspace System
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
49% 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 3,470 minutes out of 7,148, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 7,148 delay minutes reported on UA 2197.
Cancellations are rare at 0.34%, 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
12.0% 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 925 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 two other city pairs in the data, including PHL to IAH (84) and IAH to SEA (23), but none flew often enough under UA 2197 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to IAH to ORD only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 297 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 2197
For a booking, UA 2197 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 12.0% 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 ORD, every carrier and departure
- ORD to IAH, the return direction
- United Airlines 2616 on the same route86.9%
- United Airlines 787 on the same route71.8%
- United Airlines 2124 on the same route84.8%
- United Airlines 2182 on the same route88.5%
- United Airlines 1617 on the same route89.5%
- United Airlines 2417 on the same route76.8%
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.