Flight number record
UA 2426
United Airlines · Chicago to Houston
- Route
- ORD → IAH
- Departs
- 20:10
- Flights
- 317
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2426, check with United Airlines.
UA 2426 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 317 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so UA 2426 runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 111 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 313 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.26%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
15.0%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 317 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.0% 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 2426 flies
UA 2426 flies ORD to IAH without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 20:10, used on 69 of 317 flights, with 19:55 (67 flights) and 19:45 (50 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 20:1069 flights21.8%
- Departs 19:5567 flights21.1%
- Departs 19:4550 flights15.8%
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 20:10 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.5%, and UA 2426 runs 4 points worse at 66.5%. 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 2426 next to ORD to IAH
Every carrier on ORD to IAH combined arrived on time 75.0% of the time across 6,077 flights, so UA 2426 is 9 points behind it. United flew 4,000 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 78.6% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 13 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 2426thin sample | 317 | 66.5% | 83 min | 1.26% | C |
| All United Airlines on ORD–IAH | 4,000 | 78.6% | 67 min | 0.65% | B+ |
| All carriers on ORD–IAH | 6,077 | 75.0% | 74 min | 1.43% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 2426 quarter by quarter
UA 2426 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 79.5% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 51.1%, a swing of 28 points on roughly 79 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 202592 flights51.1%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights70.0%
- Jan–Mar 202684 flights79.5%
- Apr–Jun 202650 flights66.0%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 2426 did best on Friday at 73.9% on time and worst on Sunday at 57.8%. Each day rests on about 45 flights, so a gap of 16 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why UA 2426 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 8,735 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
53% 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 8,735 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 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 8,735 delay minutes reported on UA 2426.
Cancellations sit at 1.26% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
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. 15.0% 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.
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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The same number turns up on five other city pairs in the data, including SNA to ORD (118), EGE to ORD (56) and ORD to DTW (41), but none flew often enough under UA 2426 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ORD to IAH only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 317 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 2426
For a booking, UA 2426 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 15.0% 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
- ORD to IAH, every carrier and departure
- IAH to ORD, the return direction
- American Airlines 3144 on the same route53.5%
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) 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.