Flight number record

UA 2498

United Airlines · Houston to Raleigh

Route: IAH → RDU
Departs: 18:15
Flights: 273
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2498, check with United Airlines.

UA 2498 lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 273 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.

On time

77.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 271 completed flights

Avg delay

66 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.73%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

8.1%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 273 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.1% 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 2498 flies

UA 2498 flies IAH to RDU without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:15, used on 55 of 273 flights, with 18:50 (43 flights) and 18:08 (35 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 18:1555 flights20.1%
Departs 18:5043 flights15.8%
Departs 18:0835 flights12.8%

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 18:15 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 2498 runs 10 points better at 77.9%. 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 2498 next to IAH to RDU

Every carrier on IAH to RDU combined arrived on time 82.2% of the time across 906 flights, so UA 2498 is 4 points behind it. United flew 700 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.9% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, close to this flight's figure.

UA 2498 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 2498thin sample	273	77.9%	66 min	0.73%	B+
All United Airlines on IAH–RDU	700	83.9%	67 min	0.71%	B+
All carriers on IAH–RDU	906	82.2%	73 min	1.10%	B
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 2498 quarter by quarter

UA 2498 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 87.0% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 69.2%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 91 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 20256 flights—
Oct–Dec 202592 flights87.0%
Jan–Mar 202684 flights76.8%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights69.2%

Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 2498 did best on Tuesday at 87.5% on time and worst on Saturday at 65.7%. Each day rests on about 39 flights, so a gap of 22 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 2498 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 3,940 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
56%
Carrier
35%
National Airspace System
6%
Extreme weather
4%

56% 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 3,940 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 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 3,940 delay minutes reported on UA 2498.

Cancellations are rare at 0.73%, 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

8.1% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 1,042 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 SAT to IAH (157), SFO to IAH (59) and RNO to SFO (49), but none flew often enough under UA 2498 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to IAH to RDU only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 273 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 2498

For a booking, read UA 2498 as 77.9% on time with 0.73% cancelled over 273 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