Flight number record
UA 1178
United Airlines · Chicago to Norfolk
- Route
- ORD → ORF
- Departs
- 18:15
- Flights
- 354
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1178, check with United Airlines.
UA 1178 draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 354 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so UA 1178 runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 168 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
60.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 344 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.54%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
15.1%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 354 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Schedule
When UA 1178 flies
UA 1178 flies ORD to ORF without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:15, used on 70 of 354 flights, with 18:22 (41 flights) and 17:45 (38 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 18:1570 flights19.8%
- Departs 18:2241 flights11.6%
- Departs 17:4538 flights10.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 18:15 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 1178 runs 7 points worse at 60.8%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
Against the route
UA 1178 next to ORD to ORF
Every carrier on ORD to ORF combined arrived on time 71.8% of the time across 1,863 flights, so UA 1178 is 11 points behind it. United flew 690 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 66.9% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 18 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1178thin sample | 354 | 60.8% | 69 min | 2.54% | D |
| All United Airlines on ORD–ORF | 690 | 66.9% | 70 min | 1.74% | C |
| All carriers on ORD–ORF | 1,863 | 71.8% | 69 min | 2.63% | C |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 1178 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter UA 1178 held fairly steady: 64.4% in Jul–Sep 2025, 65.2% in Oct–Dec 2025, 55.6% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 57.5% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 10 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202591 flights64.4%
- Oct–Dec 202589 flights65.2%
- Jan–Mar 202685 flights55.6%
- Apr–Jun 202689 flights57.5%
Scale runs 45% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1178 did best on Wednesday at 65.3% on time and worst on Friday at 47.9%. Each day rests on about 51 flights, so a gap of 17 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why UA 1178 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 9,316 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
45% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 9,316 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 9,316 delay minutes reported on UA 1178.
Cancellations run at 2.54%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 15.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 717 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The same number turns up on five other city pairs in the data, including FCA to ORD (49), SLC to ORD (30) and ORD to LGA (2), but none flew often enough under UA 1178 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ORD to ORF only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 354 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking UA 1178
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on UA 1178: 2.54% of its 354 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs a little over an hour, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to ORF, every carrier and departure
- ORF to ORD, the return direction
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- United Airlines on-time record
- Every United Airlines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
A flight number here means United Airlines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.