Flight number record

UA 2486

United Airlines · San Diego to Chicago

Route: SAN → ORD
Departs: 17:01
Flights: 319
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2486, check with United Airlines.

UA 2486 lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 319 flights, with a median arrival 15 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, UA 2486's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 52 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 314 completed flights

Avg delay

81 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.63%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

8.9%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 319 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.9% 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 2486 flies

UA 2486 flies SAN to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:01, used on 68 of 319 flights, with 17:00 (42 flights) and 16:49 (36 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 17:0168 flights21.3%
Departs 17:0042 flights13.2%
Departs 16:4936 flights11.3%

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 17:01 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 2486 runs 15 points better at 82.8%. 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 2486 next to SAN to ORD

Every carrier on SAN to ORD combined arrived on time 78.0% of the time across 3,807 flights, so UA 2486 is 5 points ahead of it. United flew 1,672 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 82.0% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 4 points.

UA 2486 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 2486thin sample	319	82.8%	81 min	0.63%	B+
All United Airlines on SAN–ORD	1,672	82.0%	76 min	0.54%	B+
All carriers on SAN–ORD	3,807	78.0%	81 min	1.34%	B
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 2486 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter UA 2486 held fairly steady: 83.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 87.6% in Oct–Dec 2025, 79.1% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 79.4% in Apr–Jun 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.

Jul–Sep 202591 flights83.3%
Oct–Dec 202590 flights87.6%
Jan–Mar 202669 flights79.1%
Apr–Jun 202669 flights79.4%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 2486 did best on Saturday at 93.5% on time and worst on Monday at 74.5%. Each day rests on about 46 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 2486 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 4,391 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
45%
National Airspace System
45%
Carrier
11%

45% 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 4,391 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 45 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 4,391 delay minutes reported on UA 2486.

Cancellations are rare at 0.63%, 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

8.9% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 1,723 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 one other city pair in the data, including IAH to SAN (86), but none flew often enough under UA 2486 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to SAN to ORD only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 319 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 2486

For a booking, read UA 2486 as 82.8% on time with 0.63% cancelled over 319 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures