UA492

UA492 arrived on time 92.5% of the time, against 77.7% for all EWR → IAH flights, so this departure is 14.8 percentage points better than the route as a whole. Against United Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 14.4 points better.

UA492’s scheduled departure has moved during the period FlyerIntel has on file: it typically left around 6:00 AM earlier on, and around 5:30 AM 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 · 1,052 operations, July 2023 – July 2026 · If UA492 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.

Every day of the week performs about the same on this flight, steadier than 98% of 1,710 comparable flight numbers.

94.6% on time on the best day (Tuesday) against 91.2% on the worst (Sunday).

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 UA492 on EWR → IAH. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.

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

UA492 is usually the aircraft’s first flight of the day: the schedule gives it a median of 6.8 hours on the ground at EWR, so its “inbound” is mostly the aircraft’s arrival the evening before.

When the aircraft came in 15 or more minutes late, UA492 pushed back an average of 1 minute early; when it came in on time or early, an average of 1 minute early.

Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into EWR just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 810 of 1,030 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

UA492 pushes back an average of 1.4 minutes late and reaches the gate at IAH an average of 9.1 minutes early. The 10.5 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 19.7 minutes on the taxiways at EWR, 1.3 minutes shorter than a typical EWR departure in the same hour.

On arrival at IAH, UA492 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 1.3 minutes shorter than a typical IAH arrival (10.7 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 IAH. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 31,762 departures from EWR scheduled in the clock hour UA492 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at IAH (359,471 flights), not just UA492’s own. More on taxi time.

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

UA492 is scheduled out of EWR at 6:00 AM, in the 6 AM–7 AM bank. Departures from EWR in that hour arrive on time 89.2% of the time against 77.7% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 11.6 points better before anything about this particular flight is considered.

The two airport figures cover every departure from EWR 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 UA492 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. UA492 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.

• UA2425 EWR→IAH United Airlines on the same route, departs 8:40 PM, on time 66.7%
• UA1886 IAH→EWR Return trip, IAH to EWR, departs 7:20 AM, on time 88.5%
• UA404 IAH→EWR Return trip, IAH to EWR, departs 6:36 PM, on time 67.2%