Flight number record
UA 2616
United Airlines · Houston to Chicago
- Route
- IAH → ORD
- Departs
- 06:30
- Flights
- 363
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2616, check with United Airlines.
UA 2616 earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 45 minutes. That rests on 363 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 2616's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 96 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 359 completed flights
Avg delay
43 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.83%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
2.2%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 363 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 6 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Schedule
When UA 2616 flies
UA 2616 flies IAH to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:30, used on 133 of 363 flights, with 06:10 (82 flights) and 06:15 (74 flights) next.
- Departs 06:30133 flights36.6%
- Departs 06:1082 flights22.6%
- Departs 06:1574 flights20.4%
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 06:30 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and UA 2616 runs 2 points worse at 86.9%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Against the route
UA 2616 next to IAH to ORD
Every carrier on IAH to ORD combined arrived on time 75.1% of the time across 6,142 flights, so UA 2616 is 12 points ahead of it. United flew 4,084 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 78.2% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 8 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 2616thin sample | 363 | 86.9% | 43 min | 0.83% | A+ |
| All United Airlines on IAH–ORD | 4,084 | 78.2% | 69 min | 0.59% | B+ |
| All carriers on IAH–ORD | 6,142 | 75.1% | 83 min | 1.50% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 2616 quarter by quarter
UA 2616 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2026 at 91.7% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 81.3%, a swing of 10 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 202530 flights90.0%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights81.3%
- Jan–Mar 202689 flights85.2%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights90.0%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights91.7%
Scale runs 75% to 95%.
By weekday, UA 2616 did best on Friday at 94.1% on time and worst on Sunday at 78.0%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 16 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 2616 runs when it is late
UA 2616 often beats the schedule: 91 of 359 completed flights, 25%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 47 late arrivals split 20 under half an hour, 19 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 8 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early91 flights25.3%
- Within 15 min221 flights61.6%
- 15–29 min late20 flights5.6%
- 30–59 min late19 flights5.3%
- 1–2 hours late5 flights1.4%
- 2+ hours late3 flights0.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 359 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Only 13 of 359 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 2616
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 December 2025, 3 hours 55 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 carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 7 December 2025 | 3 hours 55 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 6 June 2026 | 2 hours 47 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 July 2026 | 2 hours 38 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 December 2025 | 1 hour 48 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 November 2025 | 1 hour 6 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why UA 2616 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 68% of the 2,039 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 68%National Airspace System
- 27%Carrier
- 3%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
68% 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 1,388 minutes out of 2,039, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 2,039 delay minutes reported on UA 2616.
Cancellations are rare at 0.83%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.2% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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.
The 925 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 five other city pairs in the data, including ORD to RDU (154), ORD to DEN (58) and ORD to CLE (31), but none flew often enough under UA 2616 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to IAH to ORD only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 363 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 2616
For a booking, UA 2616 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 86.9% on time and 0.83% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- IAH to ORD, every carrier and departure
- ORD to IAH, the return direction
- United Airlines 787 on the same route71.8%
- United Airlines 2124 on the same route84.8%
- United Airlines 2182 on the same route88.5%
- United Airlines 1617 on the same route89.5%
- United Airlines 2197 on the same route66.3%
- United Airlines 2417 on the same route76.8%
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) 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
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.