Flight number record

UA 1285

United Airlines · Chicago to Pittsburgh

Route: ORD → PIT
Departs: 07:25
Flights: 281
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1285, check with United Airlines.

UA 1285 earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 281 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, UA 1285's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 95 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

87.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 279 completed flights

Avg delay

58 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.71%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

3.2%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 281 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Schedule

When UA 1285 flies

UA 1285 flies ORD to PIT without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:25, used on 67 of 281 flights, with 07:10 (53 flights) and 07:15 (49 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 07:2567 flights23.8%
Departs 07:1053 flights18.9%
Departs 07:1549 flights17.4%

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 07:25 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and UA 1285 runs 2 points worse at 87.1%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

UA 1285 next to ORD to PIT

Every carrier on ORD to PIT combined arrived on time 74.9% of the time across 3,948 flights, so UA 1285 is 12 points ahead of it. United flew 1,291 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 75.8% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 8 points.

UA 1285 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 1285thin sample	281	87.1%	58 min	0.71%	A+
All United Airlines on ORD–PIT	1,291	75.8%	66 min	1.01%	B
All carriers on ORD–PIT	3,948	74.9%	81 min	1.95%	C
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 1285 quarter by quarter

UA 1285 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 92.8% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 80.6%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 70 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Jul–Sep 202574 flights89.2%
Oct–Dec 202561 flights83.3%
Jan–Mar 202663 flights80.6%
Apr–Jun 202683 flights92.8%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 1285 did best on Tuesday at 97.6% on time and worst on Monday at 74.4%. Each day rests on about 40 flights, so a gap of 23 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 1285 runs late

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 2,088 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
39%
Extreme weather
24%
National Airspace System
19%
Late-arriving aircraft
18%

Extreme weather accounts for 24% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the quarterly figures above are the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 3.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 2,088 delay minutes reported on UA 1285.

Cancellations are rare at 0.71%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.2% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

The same number turns up on eight other city pairs in the data, including DEN to PHL (19), ORD to CVG (16) and EWR to ORD (16), but none flew often enough under UA 1285 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ORD to PIT only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 281 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 1285

For a booking, UA 1285 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 87.1% on time and 0.71% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures