Flight number record

UA 252

United Airlines · Honolulu to Houston

Route: HNL → IAH
Departs: 20:30
Flights: 365
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 252, check with United Airlines.

UA 252 lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.

On time

79.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 362 completed flights

Avg delay

52 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.55%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

2.5%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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 252 flies

UA 252 flies HNL to IAH without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 20:30, used on 126 of 365 flights, with 19:55 (62 flights) and 19:40 (54 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 20:30126 flights34.5%
Departs 19:5562 flights17.0%
Departs 19:4054 flights14.8%

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 20:30 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.5%, and UA 252 runs 9 points better at 79.6%. 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 252 next to HNL to IAH

Every carrier on HNL to IAH combined arrived on time 79.8% of the time across 369 flights, so UA 252 is about level with it. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, close to this flight's figure.

UA 252 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 252	365	79.6%	52 min	0.55%	B+
All United Airlines on HNL–IAH	369	79.8%	52 min	0.54%	B+
All carriers on HNL–IAH	369	79.8%	52 min	0.54%	B+
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 252 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter UA 252 held fairly steady: 82.4% in Jul–Sep 2025, 81.5% in Oct–Dec 2025, 75.0% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 79.1% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights82.4%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights81.5%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights75.0%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights79.1%

Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 252 did best on Thursday at 84.6% on time and worst on Tuesday at 65.4%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 252 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 53% of the 3,834 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.

Carrier
53%
National Airspace System
30%
Late-arriving aircraft
17%

The largest share of delay minutes, 53%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 2,040 of the 3,834 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,834 delay minutes reported on UA 252.

Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, 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 2.5% 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.

At 3,904 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.

Every one of the 365 flights under UA 252 in the data flew HNL to IAH. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 365 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 252

For a booking, read UA 252 as 79.6% on time with 0.55% cancelled over 365 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