Flight number record
UA 496
United Airlines · Houston to Orlando
- Route
- IAH → MCO
- Departs
- 14:35
- Flights
- 362
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 496, check with United Airlines.
UA 496 lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. 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 is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 362 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
79.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 357 completed flights
Avg delay
90 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.28%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
12.0%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 362 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Schedule
When UA 496 flies
UA 496 flies IAH to MCO without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 14:35, used on 79 of 362 flights, with 14:36 (78 flights) and 14:30 (57 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 14:3579 flights21.8%
- Departs 14:3678 flights21.5%
- Departs 14:3057 flights15.7%
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 14:35 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and UA 496 runs 7 points better at 79.6%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
Against the route
UA 496 next to IAH to MCO
Every carrier on IAH to MCO combined arrived on time 81.6% of the time across 3,669 flights, so UA 496 is 2 points behind it. United flew 2,471 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 85.1% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, close to this flight's figure.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 496thin sample | 362 | 79.6% | 90 min | 0.28% | B+ |
| All United Airlines on IAH–MCO | 2,471 | 85.1% | 71 min | 0.65% | A+ |
| All carriers on IAH–MCO | 3,669 | 81.6% | 82 min | 1.01% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 496 quarter by quarter
UA 496 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 88.6% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 67.0%, a swing of 22 points on roughly 91 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 202592 flights67.0%
- Oct–Dec 202589 flights83.9%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights88.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights79.1%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 496 did best on Wednesday at 86.3% on time and worst on Saturday at 67.3%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
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 6,585 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 25%National Airspace System
- 12%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 2.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 6,585 delay minutes reported on UA 496.
Cancellations are rare at 0.28%, below the national 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The same number turns up on six other city pairs in the data, including SAN to IAH (204), MCO to IAD (116) 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. 362 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, UA 496 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 12.0% of its completed flights arrived an hour or more late, which a short layover will not absorb. If the onward flight is on a separate ticket, the risk sits with you.
Related
Where to go next
- IAH to MCO, every carrier and departure
- MCO to IAH, the return direction
- United Airlines 2662 on the same route86.5%
- United Airlines 2245 on the same route93.9%
- United Airlines 1571 on the same route80.1%
- United Airlines 2451 on the same route79.9%
- Frontier Airlines 1418 on the same route79.1%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.