Flight number record
UA 534
United Airlines · Chicago to Newark
- Route
- ORD → EWR
- Departs
- 18:28
- Flights
- 329
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 534, check with United Airlines.
UA 534 earns a D−, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 56.3% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 21 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. Late arrivals average an hour and a half. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 329 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so UA 534 runs 21 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 210 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
56.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 316 completed flights
Avg delay
84 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.34%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
19.9%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 329 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 19.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When UA 534 flies
UA 534 flies ORD to EWR without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:28, used on 70 of 329 flights, with 18:05 (39 flights) and 18:10 (37 flights) next.
- Departs 18:2870 flights21.3%
- Departs 18:0539 flights11.9%
- Departs 18:1037 flights11.2%
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 18:28 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and UA 534 runs 12 points worse at 56.3%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Against the route
UA 534 next to ORD to EWR
Every carrier on ORD to EWR combined arrived on time 69.8% of the time across 6,126 flights, so UA 534 is 14 points behind it. United flew 4,415 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 72.0% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight trails by 23 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 534thin sample | 329 | 56.3% | 84 min | 3.34% | D− |
| All United Airlines on ORD–EWR | 4,415 | 72.0% | 89 min | 2.85% | C |
| All carriers on ORD–EWR | 6,126 | 69.8% | 87 min | 3.82% | C− |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 534 quarter by quarter
UA 534 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 64.1% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 41.1%, a swing of 23 points on roughly 82 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 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights53.3%
- Jan–Mar 202666 flights61.9%
- Apr–Jun 202680 flights64.1%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights41.1%
Scale runs 35% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 534 did best on Friday at 68.9% on time and worst on Monday at 45.8%. Each day rests on about 47 flights, so a gap of 23 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 534 runs when it is late
The 138 late arrivals split 37 under half an hour, 38 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 63 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early42 flights13.3%
- Within 15 min136 flights43.0%
- 15–29 min late37 flights11.7%
- 30–59 min late38 flights12.0%
- 1–2 hours late27 flights8.5%
- 2+ hours late36 flights11.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 316 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 124 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 11 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 25 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at EWR.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 534
The latest arrival of the period was on 9 November 2025, 6 hours 11 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 9 November 2025 | 6 hours 11 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 27 July 2026 | 6 hours 8 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 July 2026 | 6 hours 7 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 8 November 2025 | 5 hours 28 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 18 May 2026 | 5 hours 15 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 534 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 44% of the 12,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%National Airspace System
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 11,650 delay minutes reported on UA 534.
Cancellations run at 3.34%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
19.9% 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 719 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 four other city pairs in the data, including PDX to ORD (103), FLL to ORD (24) and ORD to LGA (24), but none flew often enough under UA 534 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ORD to EWR only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 329 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 534
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on UA 534: 3.34% of its 329 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs an hour and a half, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to EWR, every carrier and departure
- EWR to ORD, the return direction
- United Airlines 563 on the same route90.6%
- United Airlines 2301 on the same route76.7%
- United Airlines 1209 on the same route66.5%
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Newark Liberty International (EWR) 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.