Flight number record

UA 491

United Airlines · Houston to New Orleans

Route: IAH → MSY
Departs: 07:20
Flights: 301
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 45 minutes. That rests on 301 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 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 151 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

92.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 301 completed flights

Avg delay

44 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

2.0%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 301 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

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 301 flights, with 07:30 (69 flights) and 07:40 (65 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 07:20114 flights37.9%
Departs 07:3069 flights22.9%
Departs 07:4065 flights21.6%

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 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 92.7%. 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 491 next to IAH to MSY

Every carrier on IAH to MSY combined arrived on time 82.9% of the time across 2,962 flights, so UA 491 is 10 points ahead of it. United flew 2,783 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 82.9% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 14 points.

UA 491 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 491thin sample	301	92.7%	44 min	0.00%	A+
All United Airlines on IAH–MSY	2,783	82.9%	63 min	0.25%	B+
All carriers on IAH–MSY	2,962	82.9%	65 min	0.30%	B+
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 491 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter UA 491 held fairly steady: 95.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 95.5% in Oct–Dec 2025, 89.9% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 91.2% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202543 flights95.3%
Oct–Dec 202588 flights95.5%
Jan–Mar 202679 flights89.9%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights91.2%

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 491 ranged from 89.5% on Thursday to 97.8% on Monday. With about 43 flights behind each day, a spread of 8 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

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 965 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
35%
Late-arriving aircraft
25%
Carrier
22%
Extreme weather
18%

Extreme weather accounts for 18% 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 3.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 965 delay minutes reported on UA 491.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% 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 2.0% 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.

UA 491 is not only a IAH to MSY flight. It also flew LAX to IAH (286 flights, 92.9% 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. 301 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	92.9%	44 min	0.70%	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: 92.7% 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures