UA1046

UA1046 arrived on time 68.2% of the time, against 74.1% for all ATL → ORD flights, so this departure is 5.9 percentage points worse than the route as a whole. Against United Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 11.4 points worse.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 939 operations, July 2023 – July 2026 · If UA1046 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.

Which day you fly matters unusually much here, a wider weekday spread than 92% of 1,710 comparable flight numbers.

78.4% on time on a typical Tuesday, against 60.7% on a Thursday.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · The one thing about this specific departure that ranks most extreme against every other published flight number, out of everything FlyerIntel checks — shown only when something clears a real statistical bar, not for every flight.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026

Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for UA1046 on ATL → ORD. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026

When the aircraft came in 15 or more minutes late, UA1046 pushed back an average of 63 minutes late; when it came in on time or early, an average of 3 minutes late.

Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into ATL just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 893 of 923 departures in all. A departure is left out when that flight is unknown, was cancelled or diverted, or the aircraft had sat for more than 12 hours. A flight the airline cancelled never left and is not in the count, and one flown by a substitute aircraft is matched to the aircraft that flew it, not to the one first planned.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026

UA1046 pushes back an average of 20.7 minutes late and arrives a further 4.9 minutes behind that. This departure loses ground between the two gates rather than recovering it, so a late pushback here tends to get worse on the way, not better. It spends 20.5 minutes on the taxiways at ATL, 3.5 minutes longer than a typical ATL departure in the same hour.

On arrival at ORD, UA1046 spends 24.5 min taxiing from touchdown to the gate — ground time a connecting passenger sits through before they can even leave the aircraft, on top of however late the flight itself ran. That is 6.7 minutes longer than a typical ORD arrival (17.8 min).

Departure delay is averaged over every pushback and arrival delay over every completed arrival, so the two counts differ by the flights that never reached ORD. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 48,346 departures from ATL scheduled in the clock hour UA1046 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at ORD (952,666 flights), not just UA1046’s own. More on taxi time.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026

UA1046 is scheduled out of ATL at 6:59 PM, in the 6 PM–7 PM bank. Departures from ATL in that hour arrive on time 71.1% of the time against 78.7% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 7.6 points worse before anything about this particular flight is considered.

The two airport figures cover every departure from ATL to every destination, so they describe the slot rather than this journey — the like-for-like comparison against the route is above. Hours are scheduled local, and a number whose schedule moved between banks inside the period has no single hour and is not described here at all. Why the hour matters.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Days with fewer than 120 operations are not scored.

Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route UA1046 currently operates. Blending them would produce an average of two different flights.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026

Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. UA1046 is placed in the same ordering rather than left out of it; the rows around it are the most punctual departures on the route, not all of them, so this is a comparison and not a rank. Schedules change; confirm the departure still operates before booking around this.

• DL2879 ATL→ORD Delta Air Lines on the same route, departs 5:25 PM, on time 54.7%
• DL2738 ATL→ORD Delta Air Lines on the same route, departs 3:40 PM, on time 68.7%
• UA516 ATL→ORD United Airlines on the same route, departs 3:30 PM, on time 78.3%
• UA1490 PDX→ORD United Airlines flight into ORD, PDX to ORD, departs 11:59 PM, on time 86.2%