Flight number record
UA 590
United Airlines · Baltimore to Chicago
- Route
- BWI → ORD
- Departs
- 17:32
- Flights
- 362
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 590, check with United Airlines.
UA 590 earns a D+, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 57.1% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 20 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 362 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so UA 590 runs 20 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 202 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
57.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 359 completed flights
Avg delay
92 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.55%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
15.9%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 362 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When UA 590 flies
UA 590 flies BWI to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:32, used on 67 of 362 flights, with 17:12 (60 flights) and 17:18 (53 flights) next.
- Departs 17:3267 flights18.5%
- Departs 17:1260 flights16.6%
- Departs 17:1853 flights14.6%
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 17:32 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and UA 590 runs 11 points worse at 57.1%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
UA 590 next to BWI to ORD
Every carrier on BWI to ORD combined arrived on time 75.5% of the time across 2,677 flights, so UA 590 is 18 points behind it. United flew 1,253 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 74.3% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight trails by 22 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 590thin sample | 362 | 57.1% | 92 min | 0.55% | D+ |
| All United Airlines on BWI–ORD | 1,253 | 74.3% | 86 min | 1.12% | C |
| All carriers on BWI–ORD | 2,677 | 75.5% | 94 min | 2.54% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 590 quarter by quarter
UA 590 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 62.5% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 47.5%, a swing of 15 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 202529 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights49.5%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights62.5%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights62.2%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights47.5%
Scale runs 40% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 590 did best on Saturday at 64.7% on time and worst on Monday at 48.1%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 17 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 590 runs when it is late
The 154 late arrivals split 54 under half an hour, 43 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 57 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early32 flights8.9%
- Within 15 min173 flights48.2%
- 15–29 min late54 flights15.0%
- 30–59 min late43 flights12.0%
- 1–2 hours late27 flights7.5%
- 2+ hours late30 flights8.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 359 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 87 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 5 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 72 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 590
The latest arrival of the period was on 2 April 2026, 22 hours 11 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across April, March, July and November, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 2 April 2026 | 22 hours 11 minutes | Carrier |
| 31 March 2026 | 9 hours 28 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 21 July 2026 | 8 hours 15 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 29 November 2025 | 8 hours 12 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 3 July 2026 | 6 hours 55 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 590 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 54% of the 14,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%National Airspace System
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
54% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 7,609 minutes out of 14,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 14,158 delay minutes reported on UA 590.
Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, below the national 1.89% 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
15.9% 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 622 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 three other city pairs in the data, including ORD to GRR (15), ORD to OMA (1) and IAH to SBN (1), but none flew often enough under UA 590 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to BWI to ORD 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 590
For a booking, UA 590 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 15.9% 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
- BWI to ORD, every carrier and departure
- ORD to BWI, the return direction
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) 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
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.