Flight number record

UA 490

United Airlines · Chicago to San Antonio

Route: ORD → SAT
Departs: 09:15
Flights: 293
Period: September 2025 to August 2026

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 490, check with United Airlines.

UA 490 lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average. That rests on 293 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, UA 490's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 56 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 292 completed flights

Avg delay

53 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.34%

National rate is 1.89%

1 hour+ late

4.1%

National rate is 8.3%

These figures cover 293 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 490 flies

UA 490 flies ORD to SAT without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 09:15, used on 49 of 293 flights, with 09:05 (41 flights) and 09:04 (37 flights) next.

Departs 09:1549 flights16.7%
Departs 09:0541 flights14.0%
Departs 09:0437 flights12.6%

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 09:15 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and UA 490 runs level with that at 82.9%. 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 490 next to ORD to SAT

Every carrier on ORD to SAT combined arrived on time 72.7% of the time across 2,001 flights, so UA 490 is 10 points ahead of it. United flew 889 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 74.0% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 4 points.

UA 490 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 490thin sample	293	82.9%	53 min	0.34%	B+
All United Airlines on ORD–SAT	889	74.0%	73 min	0.90%	C+
All carriers on ORD–SAT	2,001	72.7%	74 min	1.75%	C
United Airlines, whole network	830,825	78.8%	73 min	1.02%	B

Across the year

UA 490 quarter by quarter

UA 490 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 90.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 75.4%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 59 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 202555 flights87.3%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights86.7%
Apr–Jun 202656 flights76.8%
Jul–Sep 202662 flights75.4%

Scale runs 65% to 95%.

By weekday, UA 490 did best on Tuesday at 92.7% on time and worst on Friday at 76.2%. Each day rests on about 42 flights, so a gap of 17 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Arrival by arrival

How late UA 490 runs when it is late

UA 490 often beats the schedule: 124 of 292 completed flights, 42%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 50 late arrivals split 20 under half an hour, 18 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 12 an hour or more.

15+ min early124 flights42.5%
Within 15 min118 flights40.4%
15–29 min late20 flights6.8%
30–59 min late18 flights6.2%
1–2 hours late6 flights2.1%
2+ hours late6 flights2.1%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 292 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

A late pushback is often recovered here: of 55 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 20 still arrived on time. In the other direction, 15 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 SAT.

The worst days

Worst days for UA 490

The latest arrival of the period was on 13 September 2025, 3 hours 55 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The five worst days are spread across September, March, April and August, with no single month standing out.

The latest arrivals of UA 490 in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
13 September 2025	3 hours 55 minutes	National Airspace System
13 March 2026	2 hours 53 minutes	Carrier
14 April 2026	2 hours 29 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
12 August 2026	2 hours 18 minutes	National Airspace System
11 March 2026	2 hours 13 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why UA 490 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 2,667 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
40%
Late-arriving aircraft
34%
Carrier
23%
Extreme weather
3%

40% 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 1,069 minutes out of 2,667, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 2,667 delay minutes reported on UA 490.

Cancellations are rare at 0.34%, 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 4.1% 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 1,041 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.

UA 490 is not only a ORD to SAT flight. It also flew CLE to ORD (267 flights, 84.5% on time) often enough to be scored on its own. Airlines attach one number to several legs of an aircraft's day, and each leg keeps its own record here, so check which city pair is on your booking before reading a rate.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 293 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.

Other routes flown as UA 490
Also flown as	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
CLE to ORDthin sample	267	84.5%	59 min	0.75%	B+

What to do with this

Booking UA 490

For a booking, read UA 490 as 82.9% on time with 0.34% cancelled over 293 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures