Flight number record
UA 2486
United Airlines · San Diego to Chicago
- Route
- SAN → ORD
- Departs
- 16:41
- Flights
- 319
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2486, check with United Airlines.
UA 2486 lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 319 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
78.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 312 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.63%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
10.6%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 319 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When UA 2486 flies
UA 2486 flies SAN to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 16:41, used on 75 of 319 flights, with 17:01 (55 flights) and 17:00 (42 flights) next.
- Departs 16:4175 flights23.5%
- Departs 17:0155 flights17.2%
- Departs 17:0042 flights13.2%
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 16:41 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 71.9%, and UA 2486 runs 7 points better at 78.5%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
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Against the route
UA 2486 next to SAN to ORD
Every carrier on SAN to ORD combined arrived on time 77.6% of the time across 3,944 flights, so UA 2486 is about level with it. United flew 1,677 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 80.0% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, close to this flight's figure.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 2486thin sample | 319 | 78.5% | 79 min | 0.63% | B+ |
| All United Airlines on SAN–ORD | 1,677 | 80.0% | 78 min | 0.54% | B+ |
| All carriers on SAN–ORD | 3,944 | 77.6% | 79 min | 1.34% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 2486 quarter by quarter
UA 2486 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 90.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 56.9%, a swing of 33 points on roughly 64 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 202530 flights90.0%
- Oct–Dec 202590 flights87.6%
- Jan–Mar 202669 flights79.1%
- Apr–Jun 202669 flights79.4%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights56.9%
Scale runs 50% to 95%.
By weekday, UA 2486 did best on Tuesday at 87.5% on time and worst on Friday at 67.3%. Each day rests on about 46 flights, so a gap of 20 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 2486 runs when it is late
UA 2486 often beats the schedule: 154 of 312 completed flights, 49%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 67 late arrivals split 22 under half an hour, 12 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 33 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early154 flights49.4%
- Within 15 min91 flights29.2%
- 15–29 min late22 flights7.1%
- 30–59 min late12 flights3.8%
- 1–2 hours late18 flights5.8%
- 2+ hours late15 flights4.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 312 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
15 of 74 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 20% of them. 8 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 2486
The latest arrival of the period was on 16 July 2026, 5 hours 3 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 16 July 2026 | 5 hours 3 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 April 2026 | 4 hours 28 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 October 2025 | 3 hours 48 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 10 June 2026 | 3 hours 40 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 31 August 2026 | 3 hours 26 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why UA 2486 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 5,317 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%National Airspace System
- 14%Carrier
48% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 5,317 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 48 to one. The split is drawn from 5,317 delay minutes reported on UA 2486.
Cancellations are rare at 0.63%, 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
10.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
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 (24), 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 78.5% on time with 0.63% cancelled over 319 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- SAN to ORD, every carrier and departure
- ORD to SAN, the return direction
- United Airlines 1779 on the same route64.9%
- Alaska Airlines 1493 on the same route68.3%
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.