Flight number record
UA 2238
United Airlines · Newark to Los Angeles
- Route
- EWR → LAX
- Departs
- 17:00
- Flights
- 302
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2238, check with United Airlines.
UA 2238 sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 302 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so UA 2238 runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 62 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 294 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.99%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
11.6%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 302 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Schedule
When UA 2238 flies
UA 2238 flies EWR to LAX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:00, used on 79 of 302 flights, with 16:00 (41 flights) and 16:15 (37 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 17:0079 flights26.2%
- Departs 16:0041 flights13.6%
- Departs 16:1537 flights12.3%
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 17:00 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 2238 runs 3 points better at 71.4%. 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 2238 next to EWR to LAX
Every carrier on EWR to LAX combined arrived on time 71.9% of the time across 4,927 flights, so UA 2238 is about level with it. United flew 3,540 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 72.2% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 8 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 2238thin sample | 302 | 71.4% | 80 min | 1.99% | C |
| All United Airlines on EWR–LAX | 3,540 | 72.2% | 83 min | 1.95% | C |
| All carriers on EWR–LAX | 4,927 | 71.9% | 82 min | 2.31% | C |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 2238 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter UA 2238 held fairly steady: 73.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 68.6% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 71.1% in Apr–Jun 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 202592 flights73.3%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights68.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights71.1%
Scale runs 60% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 2238 did best on Thursday at 78.6% on time and worst on Wednesday at 60.5%. Each day rests on about 43 flights, so a gap of 18 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why UA 2238 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 6,715 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
43% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 6,715 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 6,715 delay minutes reported on UA 2238.
Cancellations sit at 1.99% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.66%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 2,454 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 five other city pairs in the data, including SAV to EWR (41), DEN to DSM (31) and DEN to CLE (18), but none flew often enough under UA 2238 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to EWR to LAX only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 302 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 2238
For a booking, read UA 2238 as 71.4% on time with 1.99% cancelled over 302 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- EWR to LAX, every carrier and departure
- LAX to EWR, the return direction
- United Airlines 2434 on the same route77.7%
- United Airlines 2641 on the same route70.3%
- United Airlines 2191 on the same route75.7%
- Alaska Airlines 287 on the same route72.8%
- United Airlines 2679 on the same route77.7%
- United Airlines 2692 on the same route67.0%
- Newark Liberty International (EWR) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.