Flight profile · United Airlines
UA2078
Houston (IAH) to Phoenix (PHX) · scheduled 7:50 PM – 8:42 PM
How UA2078 performs
614 operations, October 2024 – July 2026.
UA2078 arrived on time 70.7% of the time, against 78.9% for all IAH → PHX flights, so this departure is 8.2 percentage points worse than the route as a whole. Against United Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 9.5 points worse.
UA2078’s scheduled departure has moved during the period FlyerIntel has on file: it typically left around 7:45 PM earlier on, and around 8:15 PM more recently — a 30-minute shift, not the few minutes of day-to-day rounding every published schedule carries. Confirm the current departure time before booking around an older listing.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 614 operations, October 2024 – July 2026 · If UA2078 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where UA2078 is right now
A live reading, only if you ask for it. It is not part of the reliability record above.
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Against the rest of the route
| Flight or route | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe | Flights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA2078 | 70.7% | 0.98% | -3 min | 10.5% | 614 |
| United Airlines on IAH → PHX | 80.2% | 0.77% | -6 min | 7.1% | 5,089 |
| All IAH → PHX flights | 78.9% | 0.96% | -6 min | 8.0% | 8,552 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · October 2024 – July 2026
Why UA2078 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for UA2078 on IAH → PHX. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering October 2024 – July 2026
Does a late aircraft delay this flight?
How often the plane that flies UA2078 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
The aircraft flying UA2078 came in 15 or more minutes late on 23% 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 IAH just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 490 of 609 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.
Against the network at the same turn length
| Share of departures | Inbound landed 15+ late |
|---|---|
| UA2078 | 23% |
| Network, same turn | 17% |
The schedule leaves a normal turn: enough time to clean and board if the aircraft is on time, little to spare if it is not.
The network row is every flight with a scheduled turn of 60 to 89 minutes. How often UA2078’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is higher than the network’s. There are not enough departures in both groups to compare how it left.
More: Which Flight Numbers Pay for a Late Aircraft lists the flight numbers that pass a late aircraft on.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering October 2024 – July 2026
From pushback to gate
When it leaves IAH late, does that still matter by the time it reaches PHX?
UA2078 pushes back an average of 19.3 minutes late and reaches the gate at PHX an average of 10.8 minutes late. The 8.5 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 22.3 minutes on the taxiways at IAH, 2.7 minutes longer than a typical IAH departure in the same hour.
On arrival at PHX, UA2078 spends 6.4 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 1.0 minutes shorter than a typical PHX arrival (7.5 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 PHX. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 19,050 departures from IAH scheduled in the clock hour UA2078 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at PHX (598,496 flights), not just UA2078’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · October 2024 – July 2026
The hour it leaves IAH
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. UA2078 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 19,050 departures from IAH are scheduled in the 7 PM–8 PM hour over the period, against 359,450 across the whole day.
UA2078 is scheduled out of IAH at 7:50 PM, in the 7 PM–8 PM bank. Departures from IAH in that hour arrive on time 69.1% of the time against 77.4% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 8.3 points worse before anything about this particular flight is considered.
The two airport figures cover every departure from IAH 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 · October 2024 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.
Other routes UA2078 has flown
A flight number is a slot in a schedule, and carriers reassign it. These are the other city pairs this number served in the analysis period.
| Route | Operated | Flights | On time |
|---|---|---|---|
| SJC→IAH San Jose to Houston | August 19, 2025 – July 31, 2026 | 126 | 77.8% |
| PHX→EWR Phoenix to Newark | April 30, 2026 – July 31, 2026 | 92 | 85.6% |
| JAX→IAH Jacksonville to Houston | March 29, 2026 – April 29, 2026 | 32 | — |
| IND→IAH Indianapolis to Houston | December 18, 2025 – March 4, 2026 | 69 | — |
| MSY→IAH New Orleans to Houston | October 26, 2025 – December 1, 2025 | 36 | — |
| SAT→IAH San Antonio to Houston | September 25, 2025 – October 25, 2025 | 31 | — |
| RSW→IAH Fort Myers to Houston | February 13, 2025 – June 25, 2025 | 79 | — |
| TPA→IAH Tampa to Houston | May 1–21, 2025 | 21 | — |
| EWR→MIA Newark to Miami | September 26, 2024 – October 26, 2024 | 31 | — |
| IAH→ONT Houston to Ontario | May 23, 2024 – September 25, 2024 | 126 | 53.6% |
| LGA→IAH New York to Houston | May 23, 2024 – August 17, 2024 | 77 | — |
| CVG→IAH Cincinnati / Covington to Houston | September 5, 2023 – May 22, 2024 | 151 | 77.7% |
| RDM→SFO Redmond to San Francisco | May 5, 2024 | 1 | — |
| SAN→ORD San Diego to Chicago | March 7–30, 2024 | 24 | — |
| IAH→SAT Houston to San Antonio | January 9, 2024 – March 6, 2024 | 54 | — |
| SFO→PDX San Francisco to Portland | February 14, 2024 | 1 | — |
| IAH→AUS Houston to Austin | January 1–8, 2024 | 8 | — |
| EWR→TPA Newark to Tampa | October 1–27, 2023 | 20 | — |
| BZN→EWR Bozeman to Newark | July 1, 2023 – September 4, 2023 | 66 | — |
| EWR→CHS Newark to Charleston | August 1, 2023 – September 4, 2023 | 30 | — |
| EWR→RDU Newark to Raleigh–Durham | July 1–31, 2023 | 30 | — |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route UA2078 currently operates. Blending them would produce an average of two different flights.
When it goes wrong
The average describes a usual day. This is the day that ruins a connection.
61 min late
against a median of 3 min early
UA2078 has an average that understates its risk: a typical arrival is 3 min early, but the worst tenth are 64 minutes worse than that. If the trip has something unmissable at the end of it, the median is the wrong number to plan against.
Percentiles over 614 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering October 2024 – July 2026
Other flights on this route
Same airports, same journey, different odds of arriving on time.
| Flight | Airline | On time | Median arrival | Operations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA1895 | United Airlines | 83.8% | 7 min early | 1,063 |
| UA1798 | United Airlines | 82.8% | 8 min early | 987 |
| UA2078 this flight | United Airlines | 70.7% | 3 min early | 614 |
Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. UA2078 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.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 614 records of UA2078 operating IAH → PHX, published by the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics. A flight counts as delayed when it arrives 15 or more minutes after schedule. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and reported separately. Flight numbers are resolved as carrier plus number plus route, because the same number serves different routes over time.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: Most and Least Reliable Flight Numbers · The Delay You Inherit · Making Up Time in the Air
Analysis last recomputed