Flight number record

UA 739

United Airlines · Omaha to Chicago

Route: OMA → ORD
Departs: 15:17
Flights: 262
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 739, check with United Airlines.

UA 739 draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 262 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so UA 739 runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 121 extra late arrivals.

On time

65.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 258 completed flights

Avg delay

83 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.15%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

14.7%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 262 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.7% 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 739 flies

UA 739 flies OMA to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 15:17, used on 80 of 262 flights, with 15:18 (79 flights) and 15:13 (41 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 15:1780 flights30.5%
Departs 15:1879 flights30.2%
Departs 15:1341 flights15.6%

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 15:17 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and UA 739 runs 7 points worse at 65.5%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

UA 739 next to OMA to ORD

Every carrier on OMA to ORD combined arrived on time 74.5% of the time across 3,025 flights, so UA 739 is 9 points behind it. United flew 1,347 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 74.6% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 14 points.

UA 739 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 739thin sample	262	65.5%	83 min	1.15%	C
All United Airlines on OMA–ORD	1,347	74.6%	92 min	1.71%	C
All carriers on OMA–ORD	3,025	74.5%	86 min	2.61%	C
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 739 quarter by quarter

UA 739 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 73.6% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 56.0%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 66 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 202585 flights56.0%
Oct–Dec 202572 flights73.6%
Jan–Mar 202643 flights71.4%
Apr–Jun 202662 flights65.0%

Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 739 did best on Thursday at 76.3% on time and worst on Sunday at 54.1%. Each day rests on about 37 flights, so a gap of 22 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 739 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 48% of the 7,352 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.

National Airspace System
48%
Late-arriving aircraft
45%
Carrier
7%

45% 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 7,352 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 45 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 7,352 delay minutes reported on UA 739.

Cancellations sit at 1.15% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.38%.

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. 14.7% 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 same number turns up on eleven other city pairs in the data, including ORD to BZN (48), ORD to MSN (36) and ORD to SLC (31), but none flew often enough under UA 739 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to OMA to ORD only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 262 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 739

For a booking, UA 739 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 14.7% 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.

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