Flight number record
UA 590
United Airlines · Baltimore to Chicago
- Route
- BWI → ORD
- Departs
- 17:20
- Flights
- 362
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 590, check with United Airlines.
UA 590 earns an F+, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 54.7% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 23 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. 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 11 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so UA 590 runs 23 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 229 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
54.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 358 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.83%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
15.4%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 362 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Schedule
When UA 590 flies
UA 590 flies BWI to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:20, used on 99 of 362 flights, with 17:12 (60 flights) and 17:18 (53 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 17:2099 flights27.3%
- Departs 17:1260 flights16.6%
- Departs 17:1853 flights14.6%
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 17:20 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 590 runs 14 points worse at 54.7%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
Against the route
UA 590 next to BWI to ORD
Every carrier on BWI to ORD combined arrived on time 74.9% of the time across 2,690 flights, so UA 590 is 20 points behind it. United flew 1,148 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 75.1% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 24 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 590thin sample | 362 | 54.7% | 91 min | 0.83% | F+ |
| All United Airlines on BWI–ORD | 1,148 | 75.1% | 88 min | 1.31% | B |
| All carriers on BWI–ORD | 2,690 | 74.9% | 95 min | 2.42% | C |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | 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 2025 at 44.9%, a swing of 18 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 202590 flights44.9%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights49.5%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights62.5%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights62.2%
Scale runs 35% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 590 did best on Friday at 60.0% on time and worst on Monday at 47.1%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 13 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why UA 590 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 48% of the 15,000 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.
- 48%National Airspace System
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
48% 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 7,070 minutes out of 15,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 14,798 delay minutes reported on UA 590.
Cancellations are rare at 0.83%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 15.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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. 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 ORD to DFW (18), ORD to GRR (15) and MIA to ORD (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. 15.4% 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.