Flight number record

UA 2616

United Airlines · Houston to Chicago

Route: IAH → ORD
Departs: 06:30
Flights: 363
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2616, check with United Airlines.

UA 2616 earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 40 minutes. That rests on 363 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, UA 2616's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 99 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

87.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 360 completed flights

Avg delay

41 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.83%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

1.7%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 363 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 2616 flies

UA 2616 flies IAH to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:30, used on 146 of 363 flights, with 06:20 (60 flights) and 06:25 (56 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 06:30146 flights40.2%
Departs 06:2060 flights16.5%
Departs 06:2556 flights15.4%

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 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 level with that at 87.5%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

UA 2616 next to IAH to ORD

Every carrier on IAH to ORD combined arrived on time 74.8% of the time across 6,080 flights, so UA 2616 is 13 points ahead of it. United flew 4,007 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 79.0%, which this flight beats by 9 points.

UA 2616 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 2616thin sample	363	87.5%	41 min	0.83%	A+
All United Airlines on IAH–ORD	4,007	78.2%	70 min	0.60%	B+
All carriers on IAH–ORD	6,080	74.8%	82 min	1.48%	C
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 2616 quarter by quarter

UA 2616 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 93.4% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 81.3%, a swing of 12 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 202592 flights93.4%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights81.3%
Jan–Mar 202689 flights85.2%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights90.0%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 2616 did best on Friday at 96.1% on time and worst on Sunday at 76.0%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 20 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 2616 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 69% of the 1,828 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.

National Airspace System
69%
Carrier
26%
Late-arriving aircraft
3%
Extreme weather
2%

69% 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 1,260 minutes out of 1,828, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 1,828 delay minutes reported on UA 2616.

Cancellations are rare at 0.83%, 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 1.7% 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.

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. 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 ORD to RDU (92), ORD to DEN (58) and ORD to PDX (49), 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: 87.5% on time and 0.83% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single 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