Flight number record
UA 1778
United Airlines · Chicago to Omaha
- Route
- ORD → OMA
- Departs
- 08:40
- Flights
- 291
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1778, check with United Airlines.
UA 1778 earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 291 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 1778's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 78 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 289 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.69%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
5.5%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 291 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Schedule
When UA 1778 flies
UA 1778 flies ORD to OMA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 08:40, used on 93 of 291 flights, with 08:45 (80 flights) and 08:50 (67 flights) next.
- Departs 08:4093 flights32.0%
- Departs 08:4580 flights27.5%
- Departs 08:5067 flights23.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 08:40 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 83.9%, and UA 1778 runs level with that at 85.1%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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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 3,105 flights, so UA 1778 is 16 points ahead of it. United flew 1,379 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 69.6% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 6 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1778thin sample | 291 | 85.1% | 60 min | 0.69% | A+ |
| All United Airlines on ORD–OMA | 1,379 | 69.6% | 66 min | 1.52% | C |
| All carriers on ORD–OMA | 3,105 | 69.3% | 66 min | 2.45% | C |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 1778 quarter by quarter
UA 1778 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 93.3% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 79.0%, a swing of 14 points on roughly 58 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 202530 flights93.3%
- Oct–Dec 202575 flights82.4%
- Jan–Mar 202662 flights79.0%
- Apr–Jun 202662 flights88.7%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights86.9%
Scale runs 70% to 100%.
By weekday, UA 1778 did best on Saturday at 92.3% on time and worst on Sunday at 73.8%. Each day rests on about 42 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1778 runs when it is late
UA 1778 often beats the schedule: 115 of 289 completed flights, 40%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 43 late arrivals split 17 under half an hour, 10 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 16 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early115 flights39.8%
- Within 15 min131 flights45.3%
- 15–29 min late17 flights5.9%
- 30–59 min late10 flights3.5%
- 1–2 hours late10 flights3.5%
- 2+ hours late6 flights2.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 289 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
5 of 34 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. 14 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1778
The latest arrival of the period was on 21 May 2026, 3 hours 30 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 21 May 2026 | 3 hours 30 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 7 December 2025 | 3 hours 15 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 December 2025 | 2 hours 35 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 26 August 2026 | 2 hours 30 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 24 May 2026 | 2 hours 29 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 1778 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 2,564 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 20%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
51% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,564 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 to one. The split is drawn from 2,564 delay minutes reported on UA 1778.
Cancellations are rare at 0.69%, below the national 1.89% 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
5.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The same number turns up on seven other city pairs in the data, including SYR to ORD (109), IAD to ORD (55) and ROC to ORD (47), 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, UA 1778 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 85.1% on time and 0.69% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to OMA, every carrier and departure
- OMA to ORD, the return direction
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Eppley Airfield (OMA) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.