Flight number record
UA 254
United Airlines · Newark to Chicago
- Route
- EWR → ORD
- Departs
- 18:20
- Flights
- 306
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 43.5% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 34 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. Late arrivals average a little over an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 306 flights, with a median arrival 18 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so UA 254 runs 34 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 338 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
43.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 294 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.59%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
22.1%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 306 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 22.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When UA 254 flies
UA 254 flies EWR to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:20, used on 67 of 306 flights, with 18:27 (55 flights) and 18:50 (50 flights) next.
- Departs 18:2067 flights21.9%
- Departs 18:2755 flights18.0%
- Departs 18:5050 flights16.3%
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 18:20 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and UA 254 runs 25 points worse at 43.5%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
UA 254 next to EWR to ORD
Every carrier on EWR to ORD combined arrived on time 70.7% of the time across 6,123 flights, so UA 254 is 27 points behind it. United flew 4,415 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 70.3% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight trails by 35 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 254thin sample | 306 | 43.5% | 77 min | 3.59% | F− |
| All United Airlines on EWR–ORD | 4,415 | 70.3% | 80 min | 2.83% | C |
| All carriers on EWR–ORD | 6,123 | 70.7% | 85 min | 3.90% | C− |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | 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 Oct–Dec 2025 at 31.7%, a swing of 19 points on roughly 77 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.
- Oct–Dec 202565 flights31.7%
- Jan–Mar 202689 flights47.1%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights51.1%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights39.7%
Scale runs 25% to 55%.
By weekday, UA 254 did best on Tuesday at 52.4% on time and worst on Thursday at 34.2%. Each day rests on about 44 flights, so a gap of 18 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 254 runs when it is late
The 166 late arrivals split 52 under half an hour, 49 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 65 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early21 flights7.1%
- Within 15 min107 flights36.4%
- 15–29 min late52 flights17.7%
- 30–59 min late49 flights16.7%
- 1–2 hours late36 flights12.2%
- 2+ hours late29 flights9.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 294 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 94 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 7 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 79 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at ORD.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 254
The latest arrival of the period was on 26 March 2026, 6 hours 19 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 26 March 2026 | 6 hours 19 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 14 April 2026 | 6 hours 10 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 November 2025 | 6 hours 2 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 July 2026 | 5 hours 41 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 August 2026 | 5 hours 31 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 254 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 54% of the 13,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%National Airspace System
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
54% 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 6,861 minutes out of 13,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 12,808 delay minutes reported on UA 254.
Cancellations run at 3.59%, against 1.89% 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
22.1% 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.
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.
The same number turns up on nine other city pairs in the data, including SAT to EWR (93), BDL to IAD (23) and MCO to EWR (21), 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. 306 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: 3.59% of its 306 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 661 on the same route47.6%
- United Airlines 1525 on the same route77.1%
- United Airlines 1875 on the same route77.7%
- United Airlines 546 on the same route66.6%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.