Flight number record
UA 254
United Airlines · Newark to Chicago
- Route
- EWR → ORD
- Departs
- 18:27
- Flights
- 293
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 254, check with United Airlines.
UA 254 earns an F−, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 40.1% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 37 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. Late arrivals average a little over an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 293 flights, with a median arrival 21 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so UA 254 runs 37 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 375 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
40.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 282 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.41%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
24.5%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 293 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 24.5% 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 254 flies
UA 254 flies EWR to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:27, used on 56 of 293 flights, with 18:20 (52 flights) and 18:15 (50 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 18:2756 flights19.1%
- Departs 18:2052 flights17.7%
- Departs 18:1550 flights17.1%
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 18:27 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 254 runs 28 points worse at 40.1%. 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 254 next to EWR to ORD
Every carrier on EWR to ORD combined arrived on time 71.5% of the time across 6,039 flights, so UA 254 is 31 points behind it. United flew 4,389 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 71.1% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 39 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 254thin sample | 293 | 40.1% | 77 min | 3.41% | F− |
| All United Airlines on EWR–ORD | 4,389 | 71.1% | 76 min | 2.26% | C |
| All carriers on EWR–ORD | 6,039 | 71.5% | 81 min | 3.33% | C− |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 254 quarter by quarter
UA 254 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 51.1% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 17.4%, a swing of 34 points on roughly 73 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 202548 flights17.4%
- Oct–Dec 202565 flights31.7%
- Jan–Mar 202689 flights47.1%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights51.1%
Scale runs 10% to 55%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 254 did best on Tuesday at 52.4% on time and worst on Thursday at 25.7%. Each day rests on about 42 flights, so a gap of 27 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why UA 254 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 51% of the 13,000 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.
- 51%National Airspace System
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
51% 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 6,705 minutes out of 13,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 13,088 delay minutes reported on UA 254.
Cancellations run at 3.41%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 24.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 719 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 nine other city pairs in the data, including SAT to EWR (93), BDL to IAD (23) and PHX to EWR (18), but none flew often enough under UA 254 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to EWR to ORD only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 293 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 254
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on UA 254: 3.41% of its 293 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs a little over an hour, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- EWR to ORD, every carrier and departure
- ORD to EWR, the return direction
- United Airlines 1525 on the same route79.8%
- United Airlines 1875 on the same route77.4%
- United Airlines 546 on the same route70.4%
- United Airlines 661 on the same route50.2%
- United Airlines 2164 on the same route85.4%
- Newark Liberty International (EWR) 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
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.