Flight number record

UA 491

United Airlines · Houston to New Orleans

Route: IAH → MSY
Departs: 07:20
Flights: 344
Period: September 2025 to August 2026

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 491, check with United Airlines.

UA 491 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 15 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 40 minutes. That rests on 344 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, UA 491's record is 15 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 149 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

92.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 344 completed flights

Avg delay

42 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.89%

1 hour+ late

1.7%

National rate is 8.3%

These figures cover 344 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 491 flies

UA 491 flies IAH to MSY without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:20, used on 114 of 344 flights, with 07:30 (112 flights) and 07:40 (65 flights) next.

Departs 07:20114 flights33.1%
Departs 07:30112 flights32.6%
Departs 07:4065 flights18.9%

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 07:20 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and UA 491 runs 3 points better at 92.2%. 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 491 next to IAH to MSY

Every carrier on IAH to MSY combined arrived on time 83.8% of the time across 2,911 flights, so UA 491 is 8 points ahead of it. United flew 2,739 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.9% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 13 points.

UA 491 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 491thin sample	344	92.2%	42 min	0.00%	A+
All United Airlines on IAH–MSY	2,739	83.9%	60 min	0.11%	B+
All carriers on IAH–MSY	2,911	83.8%	64 min	0.14%	B+
United Airlines, whole network	830,825	78.8%	73 min	1.02%	B

Across the year

UA 491 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter UA 491 held fairly steady: 96.7% in Jul–Sep 2025, 95.5% in Oct–Dec 2025, 89.9% in Jan–Mar 2026, 91.2% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 89.3% 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 202530 flights96.7%
Oct–Dec 202588 flights95.5%
Jan–Mar 202679 flights89.9%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights91.2%
Jul–Sep 202656 flights89.3%

Scale runs 80% to 100%.

By weekday, UA 491 ranged from 88.9% on Thursday to 96.2% on Monday. With about 49 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 491 runs when it is late

UA 491 often beats the schedule: 128 of 344 completed flights, 37%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 27 late arrivals split 13 under half an hour, 8 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 6 an hour or more.

15+ min early128 flights37.2%
Within 15 min189 flights54.9%
15–29 min late13 flights3.8%
30–59 min late8 flights2.3%
1–2 hours late5 flights1.5%
2+ hours late1 flights0.3%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 344 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

A late pushback is often recovered here: of 23 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 7 still arrived on time. 11 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for UA 491

The latest arrival of the period was on 30 November 2025, 2 hours behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The five worst days are spread across November, June, May and January, with no single month standing out.

The latest arrivals of UA 491 in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
30 November 2025	2 hours	Late-arriving aircraft
16 June 2026	1 hour 53 minutes	Extreme weather
23 May 2026	1 hour 47 minutes	Extreme weather
10 January 2026	1 hour 10 minutes	National Airspace System
21 November 2025	1 hour 9 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why UA 491 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 1,138 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
33%
Late-arriving aircraft
28%
Carrier
23%
Extreme weather
16%

Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 2.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 1,138 delay minutes reported on UA 491.

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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 1.7% 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.

UA 491 is not only a IAH to MSY flight. It also flew LAX to IAH (286 flights, 90.5% 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. 344 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 491
Also flown as	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
LAX to IAHthin sample	286	90.5%	35 min	0.35%	A+

What to do with this

Booking UA 491

For a booking, UA 491 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 92.2% on time and 0.00% 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures