Flight number record
UA 787
United Airlines · Houston to Chicago
- Route
- IAH → ORD
- Departs
- 20:25
- Flights
- 363
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 787, check with United Airlines.
UA 787 sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 363 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so UA 787 runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 55 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 354 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.10%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
11.6%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 363 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When UA 787 flies
UA 787 flies IAH to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 20:25, used on 71 of 363 flights, with 19:50 (55 flights) and 18:36 (37 flights) next.
- Departs 20:2571 flights19.6%
- Departs 19:5055 flights15.2%
- Departs 18:3637 flights10.2%
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 20:25 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.1%, and UA 787 runs level with that at 71.8%. 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 787 next to IAH to ORD
Every carrier on IAH to ORD combined arrived on time 75.1% of the time across 6,142 flights, so UA 787 is 3 points behind it. United flew 4,084 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 78.2% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight trails by 7 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 787thin sample | 363 | 71.8% | 76 min | 1.10% | C |
| All United Airlines on IAH–ORD | 4,084 | 78.2% | 69 min | 0.59% | B+ |
| All carriers on IAH–ORD | 6,142 | 75.1% | 83 min | 1.50% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 787 quarter by quarter
UA 787 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 93.3% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 59.1%, a swing of 34 points on roughly 73 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 202530 flights93.3%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights76.9%
- Jan–Mar 202688 flights59.1%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights70.1%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights74.1%
Scale runs 50% to 100%.
By weekday, UA 787 did best on Monday at 76.9% on time and worst on Sunday at 64.0%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 13 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 787 runs when it is late
UA 787 often beats the schedule: 99 of 354 completed flights, 28%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 100 late arrivals split 26 under half an hour, 33 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 41 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early99 flights28.0%
- Within 15 min155 flights43.8%
- 15–29 min late26 flights7.3%
- 30–59 min late33 flights9.3%
- 1–2 hours late23 flights6.5%
- 2+ hours late18 flights5.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 354 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
17 of 92 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 18% of them. In the other direction, 25 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 787
The latest arrival of the period was on 8 June 2026, 10 hours 46 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 8 June 2026 | 10 hours 46 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 27 July 2026 | 5 hours 7 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 30 January 2026 | 4 hours 32 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 10 June 2026 | 4 hours 15 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 7 March 2026 | 4 hours 13 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 787 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 53% of the 7,626 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%National Airspace System
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
53% 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 4,074 minutes out of 7,626, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 7,626 delay minutes reported on UA 787.
Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.38%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
11.6% 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 925 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 SFO to IAH (32), MCO to IAH (24) and LGA to IAH (19), but none flew often enough under UA 787 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to IAH to ORD only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 363 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 787
For a booking, read UA 787 as 71.8% on time with 1.10% cancelled over 363 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- IAH to ORD, every carrier and departure
- ORD to IAH, the return direction
- United Airlines 2616 on the same route86.9%
- United Airlines 2124 on the same route84.8%
- United Airlines 2182 on the same route88.5%
- United Airlines 1617 on the same route89.5%
- United Airlines 2197 on the same route66.3%
- United Airlines 2417 on the same route76.8%
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) 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.