Flight number record
UA 403
United Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Chicago
- Route
- FLL → ORD
- Departs
- 16:20
- Flights
- 252
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 403, check with United Airlines.
UA 403 earns an F+, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 50.2% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 27 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. Late arrivals average an hour and a half. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 252 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so UA 403 runs 27 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 271 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
50.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 251 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
20.3%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 252 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 20.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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 403 flies
UA 403 flies FLL to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 16:20, used on 70 of 252 flights, with 16:12 (29 flights) and 16:18 (28 flights) next.
- Departs 16:2070 flights27.8%
- Departs 16:1229 flights11.5%
- Departs 16:1828 flights11.1%
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 16:20 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 71.9%, and UA 403 runs 22 points worse at 50.2%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
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 403 next to FLL to ORD
Every carrier on FLL to ORD combined arrived on time 68.7% of the time across 3,518 flights, so UA 403 is 19 points behind it. United flew 1,524 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 74.6% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight trails by 29 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 403thin sample | 252 | 50.2% | 87 min | 0.00% | F+ |
| All United Airlines on FLL–ORD | 1,524 | 74.6% | 78 min | 0.72% | C+ |
| All carriers on FLL–ORD | 3,518 | 68.7% | 86 min | 1.76% | C |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 403 quarter by quarter
UA 403 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 57.8% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 30.6%, a swing of 27 points on roughly 84 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 202521 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202549 flights30.6%
- Jan–Mar 202629 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights57.8%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights51.6%
Scale runs 20% to 65%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 403 did best on Tuesday at 58.3% on time and worst on Sunday at 36.8%. Each day rests on about 36 flights, so a gap of 22 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 403 runs when it is late
The 125 late arrivals split 38 under half an hour, 36 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 51 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early29 flights11.6%
- Within 15 min97 flights38.6%
- 15–29 min late38 flights15.1%
- 30–59 min late36 flights14.3%
- 1–2 hours late27 flights10.8%
- 2+ hours late24 flights9.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 251 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 88 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 7 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 44 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 403
The latest arrival of the period was on 29 November 2025, 21 hours 21 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 29 November 2025 | 21 hours 21 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 February 2026 | 7 hours 16 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 July 2026 | 6 hours 13 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 22 November 2025 | 4 hours 54 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 September 2025 | 4 hours 31 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 403 runs late
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 11,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%National Airspace System
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
39% 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 4,285 minutes out of 11,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 10,931 delay minutes reported on UA 403.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
20.3% 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 1,182 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 seven other city pairs in the data, including EWR to FLL (122), ORD to TUL (35) and ORD to SLC (35), but none flew often enough under UA 403 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to FLL to ORD only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 252 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 403
For a booking, UA 403 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 20.3% of its completed flights arrived an hour or more late, which a short layover will not absorb. If the onward flight is on a separate ticket, the risk sits with you.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to ORD, every carrier and departure
- ORD to FLL, the return direction
- United Airlines 1755 on the same route84.6%
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) 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
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.