UA516

UA516 arrived on time 78.3% of the time, against 74.1% for all ATL → ORD flights, so this departure is 4.2 percentage points better than the route as a whole. Against United Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 1.3 points worse.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 989 operations, September 2023 – July 2026 · If UA516 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.

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

Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for UA516 on ATL → ORD. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.

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

When the aircraft came in 15 or more minutes late, UA516 pushed back an average of 71 minutes late; when it came in on time or early, an average of 6 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, 968 of 981 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 September 2023 – July 2026

UA516 pushes back an average of 18.1 minutes late and reaches the gate at ORD an average of 14.8 minutes late. The 3.3 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 20.7 minutes on the taxiways at ATL, 3.6 minutes longer than a typical ATL departure in the same hour.

On arrival at ORD, UA516 spends 15.3 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 2.5 minutes shorter 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 72,506 departures from ATL scheduled in the clock hour UA516 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 UA516’s own. More on taxi time.

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

UA516 is scheduled out of ATL at 3:30 PM, in the 3 PM–4 PM bank. Departures from ATL in that hour arrive on time 75.8% of the time against 78.7% across the airport’s whole day, so the hour UA516 leaves in is an ordinary one for ATL and explains nothing about its record either way.

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 · September 2023 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · September 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 UA516 currently operates. Blending them would produce an average of two different flights.

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

Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. UA516 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.

• DL1477 ATL→ORD Delta Air Lines on the same route, departs 1:25 PM, on time 72.4%
• UA1046 ATL→ORD United Airlines on the same route, departs 6:59 PM, on time 68.2%
• DL1147 ATL→ORD Delta Air Lines on the same route, departs 9:00 AM, on time 80.4%