Flight number record
UA 496
United Airlines · Houston to Orlando
- Route
- IAH → MCO
- Departs
- 14:36
- Flights
- 361
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 496, check with United Airlines.
UA 496 lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 361 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
80.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 355 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.28%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
10.4%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 361 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When UA 496 flies
UA 496 flies IAH to MCO without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 14:36, used on 105 of 361 flights, with 14:30 (57 flights) and 14:35 (49 flights) next.
- Departs 14:36105 flights29.1%
- Departs 14:3057 flights15.8%
- Departs 14:3549 flights13.6%
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 14:36 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 71.9%, and UA 496 runs 9 points better at 80.6%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
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Against the route
UA 496 next to IAH to MCO
Every carrier on IAH to MCO combined arrived on time 83.2% of the time across 3,569 flights, so UA 496 is 3 points behind it. United flew 2,443 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 86.5% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 2 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 496thin sample | 361 | 80.6% | 83 min | 0.28% | B+ |
| All United Airlines on IAH–MCO | 2,443 | 86.5% | 71 min | 0.53% | A+ |
| All carriers on IAH–MCO | 3,569 | 83.2% | 80 min | 1.04% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 496 quarter by quarter
UA 496 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 61.0%, a swing of 29 points on roughly 72 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 202589 flights83.9%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights88.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights79.1%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights61.0%
Scale runs 55% to 95%.
By weekday, UA 496 did best on Wednesday at 92.2% on time and worst on Saturday at 72.0%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 20 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 496 runs when it is late
UA 496 often beats the schedule: 144 of 355 completed flights, 41%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When UA 496 is late it tends to be very late: 37 of its 69 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 17 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early144 flights40.6%
- Within 15 min142 flights40.0%
- 15–29 min late14 flights3.9%
- 30–59 min late18 flights5.1%
- 1–2 hours late20 flights5.6%
- 2+ hours late17 flights4.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 355 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
16 of 78 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 21% of them. Only 7 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 496
The latest arrival of the period was on 17 July 2026, 4 hours 35 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 17 July 2026 | 4 hours 35 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 March 2026 | 4 hours 13 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 May 2026 | 3 hours 19 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 May 2026 | 3 hours 12 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 15 June 2026 | 3 hours 2 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 496 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 5,700 reported delay minutes.
- 40%National Airspace System
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
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 2,298 minutes out of 5,700, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 5,700 delay minutes reported on UA 496.
Cancellations are rare at 0.28%, 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
10.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 854 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 seven other city pairs in the data, including SAN to IAH (186), MCO to IAD (55) and SFO to IAH (23), but none flew often enough under UA 496 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to IAH to MCO only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 361 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 496
For a booking, read UA 496 as 80.6% on time with 0.28% cancelled over 361 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- IAH to MCO, every carrier and departure
- MCO to IAH, the return direction
- United Airlines 2662 on the same route86.8%
- United Airlines 2245 on the same route94.7%
- United Airlines 1571 on the same route84.5%
- United Airlines 2451 on the same route79.8%
- Frontier Airlines 1418 on the same route77.9%
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- Orlando International (MCO) 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.