Flight profile · United Airlines
UA404
Houston (IAH) to Newark (EWR) · scheduled 6:36 PM – 10:59 PM
How UA404 performs
646 operations, August 2024 – July 2026.
UA404 arrived on time 67.2% of the time, against 75.3% for all IAH → EWR flights, so this departure is 8.1 percentage points worse than the route as a whole. Against United Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 7.7 points worse.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 646 operations, August 2024 – July 2026 · If UA404 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where UA404 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA404 | 67.2% | 2.17% | 1 min | 13.5% | 646 |
| United Airlines on IAH → EWR | 74.9% | 2.07% | -5 min | 10.0% | 10,558 |
| All IAH → EWR flights | 75.3% | 2.16% | -6 min | 9.9% | 11,534 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · August 2024 – July 2026
Why UA404 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for UA404 on IAH → EWR. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering August 2024 – July 2026
Does a late aircraft delay this flight?
How often the plane that flies UA404 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
The aircraft flying UA404 came in 15 or more minutes late on 19% 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, 525 of 634 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 |
|---|---|
| UA404 | 19% |
| 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 UA404’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is about the same as 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 August 2024 – July 2026
From pushback to gate
When it leaves IAH late, does that still matter by the time it reaches EWR?
UA404 pushes back an average of 25.2 minutes late and reaches the gate at EWR an average of 18.2 minutes late. The 7.0 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 24.9 minutes on the taxiways at IAH, 3.2 minutes longer than a typical IAH departure in the same hour.
On arrival at EWR, UA404 spends 9.4 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 about what any arrival at EWR 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 EWR. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 46,257 departures from IAH scheduled in the clock hour UA404 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at EWR (387,854 flights), not just UA404’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · August 2024 – July 2026
The hour it leaves IAH
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. UA404 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 46,257 departures from IAH are scheduled in the 6 PM–7 PM hour over the period, against 359,450 across the whole day.
UA404 is scheduled out of IAH at 6:36 PM, in the 6 PM–7 PM bank. Departures from IAH in that hour arrive on time 71.0% of the time against 77.4% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 6.5 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 · August 2024 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.
Other routes UA404 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAT→IAH San Antonio to Houston | February 12, 2026 – July 31, 2026 | 170 | 75.9% |
| SLC→IAH Salt Lake City to Houston | December 18, 2025 – January 5, 2026 | 19 | — |
| SFO→IAH San Francisco to Houston | August 19, 2025 – September 24, 2025 | 37 | — |
| LGA→IAH New York to Houston | May 22, 2025 – June 25, 2025 | 35 | — |
| RDU→EWR Raleigh–Durham to Newark | May 3, 2025 | 1 | — |
| TUS→IAH Tucson to Houston | March 30, 2025 – April 30, 2025 | 27 | — |
| DEN→ECP Denver to Panama City Beach | April 5–26, 2025 | 4 | — |
| PSP→IAH Palm Springs to Houston | December 19, 2024 – March 29, 2025 | 60 | — |
| SFO→PSP San Francisco to Palm Springs | December 19, 2024 – February 10, 2025 | 36 | — |
| DEN→IAH Denver to Houston | July 1, 2023 – August 18, 2024 | 338 | 81.9% |
| IAH→MSY Houston to New Orleans | June 27, 2024 – August 18, 2024 | 44 | — |
| BWI→DEN Baltimore to Denver | May 2–22, 2024 | 17 | — |
| OMA→ORD Omaha to Chicago | May 3–5, 2024 | 2 | — |
| DEN→RIC Denver to Richmond | March 31, 2024 – May 1, 2024 | 32 | — |
| IAH→AUS Houston to Austin | March 7–30, 2024 | 24 | — |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route UA404 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.
80 min late
against a median of 1 min late
UA404 has an average that understates its risk: a typical arrival is 1 min late, but the worst tenth are 79 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 646 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering August 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA1886 | United Airlines | 88.5% | 9 min early | 861 |
| UA404 this flight | United Airlines | 67.2% | 1 min late | 646 |
Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. UA404 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 646 records of UA404 operating IAH → EWR, 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