Flight number record

UA 544

United Airlines · Houston to Cleveland

Route: IAH → CLE
Departs: 07:20
Flights: 362
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 544, check with United Airlines.

UA 544 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 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 50 minutes. That rests on 362 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, UA 544's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 105 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

88.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 362 completed flights

Avg delay

48 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

2.5%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 362 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 544 flies

UA 544 flies IAH to CLE without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:20, used on 77 of 362 flights, with 07:35 (72 flights) and 16:25 (42 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 07:2077 flights21.3%
Departs 07:3572 flights19.9%
Departs 16:2542 flights11.6%

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 07:20 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and UA 544 runs level with that at 88.1%. 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 544 next to IAH to CLE

Every carrier on IAH to CLE combined arrived on time 84.3% of the time across 824 flights, so UA 544 is 4 points ahead of it. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 9 points.

UA 544 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 544thin sample	362	88.1%	48 min	0.00%	A+
All United Airlines on IAH–CLE	824	84.3%	56 min	0.24%	B+
All carriers on IAH–CLE	824	84.3%	56 min	0.24%	B+
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 544 quarter by quarter

UA 544 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 93.1% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 82.6%, a swing of 11 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 flights82.6%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights84.8%
Jan–Mar 202687 flights93.1%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights92.3%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 544 ranged from 82.4% on Sunday to 94.1% on Wednesday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 12 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why UA 544 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 2,048 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
53%
Carrier
29%
National Airspace System
10%
Extreme weather
8%

53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 2,048 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 2,048 delay minutes reported on UA 544.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.5% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 1,091 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 four other city pairs in the data, including LAX to IAH (49), ORD to MIA (1) and ABQ to IAH (1), but none flew often enough under UA 544 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to IAH to CLE 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 544

For a booking, UA 544 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 88.1% on time and 0.00% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single 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