Flight number record
UA 546
United Airlines · Newark to Chicago
- Route
- EWR → ORD
- Departs
- 19:45
- Flights
- 329
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 546, check with United Airlines.
UA 546 draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is close to two hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 329 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so UA 546 runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 107 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 314 completed flights
Avg delay
102 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.26%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
17.5%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 329 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Schedule
When UA 546 flies
UA 546 flies EWR to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 19:45, used on 95 of 329 flights, with 20:19 (81 flights) next.
- Departs 19:4595 flights28.9%
- Departs 20:1981 flights24.6%
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 19:45 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and UA 546 runs level with that at 66.6%. 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 546 next to EWR to ORD
Every carrier on EWR to ORD combined arrived on time 70.7% of the time across 6,123 flights, so UA 546 is 4 points behind it. United flew 4,415 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 70.3% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight trails by 12 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 546thin sample | 329 | 66.6% | 102 min | 4.26% | C− |
| All United Airlines on EWR–ORD | 4,415 | 70.3% | 80 min | 2.83% | C |
| All carriers on EWR–ORD | 6,123 | 70.7% | 85 min | 3.90% | C− |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 546 quarter by quarter
UA 546 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 76.4% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 44.4%, a swing of 32 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 202526 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202575 flights62.2%
- Jan–Mar 202676 flights76.4%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights70.5%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights44.4%
Scale runs 35% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 546 did best on Tuesday at 77.6% on time and worst on Thursday at 56.5%. Each day rests on about 47 flights, so a gap of 21 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 546 runs when it is late
When UA 546 is late it tends to be very late: 55 of its 105 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 35 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early67 flights21.3%
- Within 15 min142 flights45.2%
- 15–29 min late25 flights8.0%
- 30–59 min late25 flights8.0%
- 1–2 hours late20 flights6.4%
- 2+ hours late35 flights11.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 314 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
12 of 95 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 13% of them. In the other direction, 22 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 ORD.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 546
The latest arrival of the period was on 10 March 2026, 6 hours 25 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 10 March 2026 | 6 hours 25 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 27 July 2026 | 6 hours 1 minute | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 July 2026 | 5 hours 51 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 April 2026 | 5 hours 14 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 11 August 2026 | 5 hours 11 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 546 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 41%National Airspace System
- 12%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
45% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 19 to one. The split is drawn from 10,728 delay minutes reported on UA 546.
Cancellations run at 4.26%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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
17.5% 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 LAS to EWR (141), SAV to EWR (97) and ORD to IAD (2), but none flew often enough under UA 546 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to EWR to ORD 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 546
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on UA 546: 4.26% of its 329 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs close to two hours, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- EWR to ORD, every carrier and departure
- ORD to EWR, the return direction
- United Airlines 661 on the same route47.6%
- United Airlines 1525 on the same route77.1%
- United Airlines 1875 on the same route77.7%
- United Airlines 254 on the same route43.5%
- Newark Liberty International (EWR) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) 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.