Flight number record
UA 487
United Airlines · Houston to San Francisco
- Route
- IAH → SFO
- Departs
- 05:22
- Flights
- 319
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 487, check with United Airlines.
UA 487 earns an A+. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 20 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 319 flights, with a median arrival 18 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 487's record is 20 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 199 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
97.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 317 completed flights
Avg delay
104 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.31%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
1.6%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 319 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 18 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.
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Schedule
When UA 487 flies
UA 487 flies IAH to SFO without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 05:22, used on 75 of 319 flights, with 05:00 (74 flights) and 05:15 (56 flights) next.
- Departs 05:2275 flights23.5%
- Departs 05:0074 flights23.2%
- Departs 05:1556 flights17.6%
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 05:22 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and UA 487 runs 8 points better at 97.2%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
UA 487 next to IAH to SFO
Every carrier on IAH to SFO combined arrived on time 78.2% of the time across 3,578 flights, so UA 487 is 19 points ahead of it. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 18 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 487thin sample | 319 | 97.2% | 104 min | 0.31% | A+ |
| All United Airlines on IAH–SFO | 3,578 | 78.2% | 62 min | 0.42% | B+ |
| All carriers on IAH–SFO | 3,578 | 78.2% | 62 min | 0.42% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 487 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter UA 487 held fairly steady: 100.0% in Oct–Dec 2025, 96.6% in Jan–Mar 2026, 93.4% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 100.0% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 20256 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights100.0%
- Jan–Mar 202689 flights96.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights93.4%
- Jul–Sep 202641 flights100.0%
Scale runs 85% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 487 ranged from 93.3% on Monday to 100.0% on Tuesday. With about 46 flights behind each day, a spread of 7 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 487 runs when it is late
UA 487 often beats the schedule: 193 of 317 completed flights, 61%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When UA 487 is late it tends to be very late: 5 of its 9 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 4 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early193 flights60.9%
- Within 15 min115 flights36.3%
- 15–29 min late4 flights1.3%
- 30–59 min late0 flights0.0%
- 1–2 hours late1 flights0.3%
- 2+ hours late4 flights1.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 317 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Only 13 of 317 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 487
The latest arrival of the period was on 30 March 2026, 4 hours 27 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 30 March 2026 | 4 hours 27 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 February 2026 | 3 hours 4 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 March 2026 | 2 hours 33 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 June 2026 | 2 hours 17 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 May 2026 | 1 hour 52 minutes | Extreme weather |
Delay causes
Why UA 487 runs late
Carrier accounts for 76% of the 936 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 76%Carrier
- 14%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 14% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the quarterly figures above are the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 936 delay minutes reported on UA 487.
Cancellations are rare at 0.31%, 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 1.6% 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.
At 1,635 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The same number turns up on ten other city pairs in the data, including SFO to MFR (55), SFO to IND (53) and SFO to SBP (47), but none flew often enough under UA 487 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to IAH to SFO only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 319 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 487
For a booking, UA 487 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 97.2% on time and 0.31% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- IAH to SFO, every carrier and departure
- SFO to IAH, the return direction
- United Airlines 2358 on the same route72.0%
- United Airlines 1768 on the same route89.1%
- United Airlines 589 on the same route79.6%
- United Airlines 2611 on the same route76.8%
- United Airlines 1609 on the same route80.7%
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) 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.