UA1421

UA1421 arrived on time 91.5% of the time, against 74.7% for all ORD → FLL flights, so this departure is 16.8 percentage points better than the route as a whole. Against United Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 11.4 points better.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 605 operations, June 2024 – July 2026 · If UA1421 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.

This flight runs unusually far ahead of the ORD → FLL route as a whole, better than 99% of 11,788 comparable flight numbers.

91.5% on time for this specific departure, against 74.7% for every ORD → FLL flight.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · June 2024 – 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 · June 2024 – July 2026

Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for UA1421 on ORD → FLL. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering June 2024 – July 2026

UA1421 is usually the aircraft’s first flight of the day: the schedule gives it a median of 8 hours on the ground at ORD, so its “inbound” is mostly the aircraft’s arrival the evening before.

The aircraft flying UA1421 came in 15 or more minutes late on 22% of the departures where its previous flight is known. There are not enough departures in both groups to say how the flight left after a late one and after an on-time one.

Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into ORD just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 526 of 603 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 June 2024 – July 2026

UA1421 pushes back an average of 1.9 minutes early and reaches the gate at FLL an average of 7.2 minutes early. The 5.2 minutes between those two figures are slack the published schedule already carries, which is why a late pushback on this flight does not reliably become a late arrival. It spends 25.8 minutes on the taxiways at ORD, 1.5 minutes longer than a typical ORD departure in the same hour.

On arrival at FLL, UA1421 spends 7.0 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 about what any arrival at FLL spends on the ground before reaching the gate.

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 FLL. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 67,479 departures from ORD scheduled in the clock hour UA1421 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at FLL (278,720 flights), not just UA1421’s own. More on taxi time.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · June 2024 – July 2026

UA1421 is scheduled out of ORD at 7:00 AM, in the 7 AM–8 AM bank. Departures from ORD in that hour arrive on time 86.6% of the time against 74.5% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 12.1 points better before anything about this particular flight is considered.

The two airport figures cover every departure from ORD 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 · June 2024 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.

Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route UA1421 currently operates. Blending them would produce an average of two different flights.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering June 2024 – July 2026

Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. UA1421 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.

• UA1755 FLL→ORD Return trip, FLL to ORD, departs 12:26 PM, on time 86.0%
• UA2333 CHS→ORD United Airlines flight into ORD, CHS to ORD, departs 6:30 AM, on time 90.1%
• UA2188 DEN→FLL United Airlines flight into FLL, DEN to FLL, departs 10:08 AM, on time 80.5%
• UA739 OMA→ORD United Airlines flight into ORD, OMA to ORD, departs 3:27 PM, on time 72.1%