Flight number record
UA 492
United Airlines · Newark to Houston
- Route
- EWR → IAH
- Departs
- 06:00
- Flights
- 327
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 492, check with United Airlines.
UA 492 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 14 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 327 flights, with a median arrival 16 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 492's record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 140 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
91.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 323 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.22%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
1.9%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 327 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 16 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 492 flies
UA 492 flies EWR to IAH without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:00, used on 148 of 327 flights, with 05:35 (71 flights) and 05:45 (53 flights) next.
- Departs 06:00148 flights45.3%
- Departs 05:3571 flights21.7%
- Departs 05:4553 flights16.2%
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 06:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and UA 492 runs 2 points better at 91.3%. 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 492 next to EWR to IAH
Every carrier on EWR to IAH combined arrived on time 80.2% of the time across 3,714 flights, so UA 492 is 11 points ahead of it. United flew 3,510 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 80.8% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 13 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 492thin sample | 327 | 91.3% | 73 min | 1.22% | A |
| All United Airlines on EWR–IAH | 3,510 | 80.8% | 77 min | 1.60% | B |
| All carriers on EWR–IAH | 3,714 | 80.2% | 78 min | 1.97% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 492 quarter by quarter
UA 492 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 100.0% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 86.8%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 65 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 flights100.0%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights91.2%
- Jan–Mar 202653 flights92.0%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights86.8%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights93.4%
Scale runs 80% to 100%.
By weekday, UA 492 ranged from 87.2% on Saturday to 95.7% on Monday. With about 47 flights behind each day, a spread of 9 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 492 runs when it is late
UA 492 often beats the schedule: 168 of 323 completed flights, 52%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 18 of the 28 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 6 reached an hour or more.
- 15+ min early168 flights52.0%
- Within 15 min127 flights39.3%
- 15–29 min late18 flights5.6%
- 30–59 min late4 flights1.2%
- 1–2 hours late2 flights0.6%
- 2+ hours late4 flights1.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 323 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Only 19 of 323 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 492
The latest arrival of the period was on 14 December 2025, 12 hours 18 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 14 December 2025 | 12 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 February 2026 | 5 hours 11 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 June 2026 | 2 hours 48 minutes | Carrier |
| 25 December 2025 | 2 hours 2 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 18 February 2026 | 1 hour 50 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why UA 492 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 2,056 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,056 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 39 to one. The split is drawn from 2,056 delay minutes reported on UA 492.
Cancellations sit at 1.22% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 1.9% 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 1,400 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 five other city pairs in the data, including IAH to SNA (36), IAH to ATL (31) and IAH to SLC (24), but none flew often enough under UA 492 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to EWR to IAH only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 327 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 492
For a booking, UA 492 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 91.3% on time and 1.22% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- EWR to IAH, every carrier and departure
- IAH to EWR, the return direction
- United Airlines 2425 on the same route72.3%
- Newark Liberty International (EWR) delay statistics
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) 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.