Flight number record

UA 500

United Airlines · Indianapolis to San Francisco

Route: IND → SFO
Departs: 06:05
Flights: 296
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 500, check with United Airlines.

UA 500 lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 296 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, UA 500's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 61 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 295 completed flights

Avg delay

70 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.34%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

5.8%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 296 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 500 flies

UA 500 flies IND to SFO without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:05, used on 86 of 296 flights, with 06:00 (72 flights) and 07:15 (43 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 06:0586 flights29.1%
Departs 06:0072 flights24.3%
Departs 07:1543 flights14.5%

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 06:05 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and UA 500 runs 6 points worse at 83.7%. 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 500 next to IND to SFO

Every carrier on IND to SFO combined arrived on time 76.4% of the time across 527 flights, so UA 500 is 7 points ahead of it. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 5 points.

UA 500 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 500thin sample	296	83.7%	70 min	0.34%	B+
All United Airlines on IND–SFO	527	76.4%	79 min	0.38%	B+
All carriers on IND–SFO	527	76.4%	79 min	0.38%	B+
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 500 quarter by quarter

UA 500 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 90.2% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 77.4%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 74 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 flights90.2%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights84.6%
Jan–Mar 202650 flights78.0%
Apr–Jun 202662 flights77.4%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 500 did best on Wednesday at 92.7% on time and worst on Sunday at 78.6%. Each day rests on about 42 flights, so a gap of 14 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 500 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 52% of the 3,372 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Carrier
52%
Late-arriving aircraft
26%
National Airspace System
20%
Extreme weather
2%

The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,764 of the 3,372 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,372 delay minutes reported on UA 500.

Cancellations are rare at 0.34%, 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

5.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 1,943 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The same number turns up on six other city pairs in the data, including SFO to BUR (84), SNA to IAH (49) and SFO to SNA (49), but none flew often enough under UA 500 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to IND to SFO only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 296 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 500

For a booking, read UA 500 as 83.7% on time with 0.34% cancelled over 296 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular 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