Flight number record
UA 2438
United Airlines · Newark to Houston
- Route
- EWR → IAH
- Departs
- 07:00
- Flights
- 266
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2438, check with United Airlines.
UA 2438 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 50 minutes. That rests on 266 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 2438's record is 16 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 159 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
93.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 262 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.75%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
1.1%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 266 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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.
Schedule
When UA 2438 flies
UA 2438 flies EWR to IAH without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:00, used on 100 of 266 flights, with 07:05 (49 flights) and 07:06 (42 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 07:00100 flights37.6%
- Departs 07:0549 flights18.4%
- Departs 07:0642 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 07:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and UA 2438 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.
Against the route
UA 2438 next to EWR to IAH
Every carrier on EWR to IAH combined arrived on time 79.6% of the time across 3,798 flights, so UA 2438 is 14 points ahead of it. United flew 3,534 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 80.4% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 15 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 2438thin sample | 266 | 93.5% | 52 min | 0.75% | A+ |
| All United Airlines on EWR–IAH | 3,534 | 80.4% | 74 min | 1.64% | B |
| All carriers on EWR–IAH | 3,798 | 79.6% | 75 min | 2.08% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 2438 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter UA 2438 held fairly steady: 97.8% in Jul–Sep 2025, 91.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 92.5% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 90.0% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202592 flights97.8%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights91.3%
- Jan–Mar 202641 flights92.5%
- Apr–Jun 202641 flights90.0%
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 2438 ranged from 86.5% on Sunday to 97.4% on Tuesday. With about 38 flights behind each day, a spread of 11 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Delay causes
Why UA 2438 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 57% of the 878 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.
- 57%National Airspace System
- 28%Carrier
- 10%Extreme weather
- 5%Late-arriving aircraft
57% 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 502 minutes out of 878, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 878 delay minutes reported on UA 2438.
Cancellations are rare at 0.75%, below the national 1.81% 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 1.1% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 1,400 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 six other city pairs in the data, including RIC to DEN (32), ORD to RDU (24) and FCA to DEN (21), but none flew often enough under UA 2438 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to EWR to IAH only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 266 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 2438
For a booking, UA 2438 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 93.5% on time and 0.75% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- EWR to IAH, every carrier and departure
- IAH to EWR, the return direction
- United Airlines 2425 on the same route74.1%
- United Airlines 492 on the same route92.0%
- United Airlines 2674 on the same route69.5%
- United Airlines 571 on the same route80.8%
- Newark Liberty International (EWR) 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
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.