Flight number record
UA 2261
United Airlines · Houston to Fort Lauderdale
- Route
- IAH → FLL
- Departs
- 07:20
- Flights
- 262
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2261, check with United Airlines.
UA 2261 earns an A+. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 16 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 262 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 2261's record is 16 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 162 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
93.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 261 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.38%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
1.9%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 262 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 2261 flies
UA 2261 flies IAH to FLL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:20, used on 114 of 262 flights, with 07:35 (57 flights) and 07:30 (36 flights) next.
- Departs 07:20114 flights43.5%
- Departs 07:3557 flights21.8%
- Departs 07:3036 flights13.7%
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 07:20 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and UA 2261 runs 4 points better at 93.5%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
UA 2261 next to IAH to FLL
Every carrier on IAH to FLL combined arrived on time 78.5% of the time across 2,923 flights, so UA 2261 is 15 points ahead of it. United flew 1,893 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 85.6% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 15 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 2261thin sample | 262 | 93.5% | 59 min | 0.38% | A+ |
| All United Airlines on IAH–FLL | 1,893 | 85.6% | 59 min | 0.58% | A+ |
| All carriers on IAH–FLL | 2,923 | 78.5% | 67 min | 1.27% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 2261 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter UA 2261 held fairly steady: 97.0% in Oct–Dec 2025, 97.3% in Jan–Mar 2026, 90.0% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 88.1% 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.
- Oct–Dec 202566 flights97.0%
- Jan–Mar 202674 flights97.3%
- Apr–Jun 202680 flights90.0%
- Jul–Sep 202642 flights88.1%
Scale runs 80% to 100%.
By weekday, UA 2261 ranged from 90.0% on Monday to 97.7% on Thursday. With about 37 flights behind each day, a spread of 8 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 2261 runs when it is late
UA 2261 often beats the schedule: 108 of 261 completed flights, 41%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 17 late arrivals split 7 under half an hour, 5 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 5 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early108 flights41.4%
- Within 15 min136 flights52.1%
- 15–29 min late7 flights2.7%
- 30–59 min late5 flights1.9%
- 1–2 hours late2 flights0.8%
- 2+ hours late3 flights1.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 261 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Only 16 of 261 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 2261
The latest arrival of the period was on 29 August 2026, 2 hours 57 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 29 August 2026 | 2 hours 57 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 18 March 2026 | 2 hours 33 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 March 2026 | 2 hours 32 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 7 April 2026 | 1 hour 50 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 22 June 2026 | 1 hour 14 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 2261 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 69% of the 997 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 69%National Airspace System
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
69% 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 688 minutes out of 997, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 997 delay minutes reported on UA 2261.
Cancellations are rare at 0.38%, 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 1.9% 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.
The 966 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 three other city pairs in the data, including FLL to IAH (55), SFO to EWR (1) and EWR to DEN (1), but none flew often enough under UA 2261 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to IAH to FLL only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 262 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 2261
For a booking, UA 2261 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 93.5% on time and 0.38% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- IAH to FLL, every carrier and departure
- FLL to IAH, the return direction
- United Airlines 277 on the same route83.0%
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) 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 to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
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.