Flight number record

UA 1778

United Airlines · Chicago to Omaha

Route: ORD → OMA
Departs: 08:45
Flights: 291
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1778, check with United Airlines.

UA 1778 earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 55 minutes. That rests on 291 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, UA 1778's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 68 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 289 completed flights

Avg delay

55 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.34%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

4.5%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 291 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 1778 flies

UA 1778 flies ORD to OMA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 08:45, used on 108 of 291 flights, with 08:50 (80 flights) and 08:40 (52 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 08:45108 flights37.1%
Departs 08:5080 flights27.5%
Departs 08:4052 flights17.9%

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 08:45 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and UA 1778 runs level with that at 84.4%. 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 1778 next to ORD to OMA

Every carrier on ORD to OMA combined arrived on time 69.3% of the time across 3,022 flights, so UA 1778 is 15 points ahead of it. United flew 1,348 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 70.6% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 5 points.

UA 1778 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 1778thin sample	291	84.4%	55 min	0.34%	B+
All United Airlines on ORD–OMA	1,348	70.6%	65 min	1.19%	C
All carriers on ORD–OMA	3,022	69.3%	65 min	2.22%	C
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 1778 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter UA 1778 held fairly steady: 86.8% in Jul–Sep 2025, 82.4% in Oct–Dec 2025, 79.0% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 88.7% 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 202592 flights86.8%
Oct–Dec 202575 flights82.4%
Jan–Mar 202662 flights79.0%
Apr–Jun 202662 flights88.7%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 1778 did best on Tuesday at 90.0% on time and worst on Sunday at 72.1%. Each day rests on about 42 flights, so a gap of 18 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 1778 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 2,471 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
53%
National Airspace System
24%
Carrier
19%
Extreme weather
4%

53% 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 2,471 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 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 2,471 delay minutes reported on UA 1778.

Cancellations are rare at 0.34%, 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 4.5% 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 seven other city pairs in the data, including SYR to ORD (171), IAD to ORD (55) and ORD to ALB (32), but none flew often enough under UA 1778 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ORD to OMA only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 291 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 1778

For a booking, read UA 1778 as 84.4% on time with 0.34% cancelled over 291 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular 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