Carrier route record
UAEWR→ORF
United Airlines · Newark to Norfolk
- Flights
- 159
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 18%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on EWR to ORF draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 159 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so United on EWR to ORF runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 102 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 155 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.52%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
80.3%
Every carrier on EWR to ORF, 867 flights
These figures cover 159 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on EWR to ORF
United flew 159 of the 867 flights on EWR to ORF, about 18% of it. Its 67.1% on time is 13 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 80.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 83.4% to United at 67.1%.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 708 | 83.4% | 55 min | 7.20% | B− |
| United Airlines (this page)thin sample | 159 | 67.1% | 59 min | 2.52% | C |
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Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 159 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split United's EWR to ORF record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 67.1% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
United on EWR to ORF through the year
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202578 flights59.7%
- Jan–Mar 202650 flights81.2%
- Apr–Jun 20261 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 67.1% on time across 159 flights.
Split by quarter, United on EWR to ORF logged 30 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 78 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 50 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 1 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 67.1% annual figure is the one to use.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on EWR to ORF runs when it is late
The 51 late arrivals split 17 under half an hour, 12 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 22 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early33 flights21.3%
- Within 15 min71 flights45.8%
- 15–29 min late17 flights11.0%
- 30–59 min late12 flights7.7%
- 1–2 hours late18 flights11.6%
- 2+ hours late4 flights2.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 155 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
9 of 51 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 18% of them. In the other direction, 9 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 ORF.
The worst days
Worst days for United on EWR to ORF
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 December 2025, 2 hours 49 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 7 December 2025 | 2 hours 49 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 November 2025 | 2 hours 44 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 7 February 2026 | 2 hours 39 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 2 November 2025 | 2 hours 29 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 26 September 2025 | 1 hour 53 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 66% of the 2,999 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 66%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
66% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,999 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 66 to one. The split is drawn from 2,999 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 2.52%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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 stage length
What a delay here costs
14.2% 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.
At 284 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8pm–5am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 89.7% on time across 160 flights, 23 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 23 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 159 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 United on EWR to ORF
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 159 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 67.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 155 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.