Flight number record

UA 212

United Airlines · Los Angeles to Chicago

Route: LAX → ORD
Departs: 17:00
Flights: 280
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 212, check with United Airlines.

UA 212 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 an hour and a half. That rests on 280 flights, with a median arrival 18 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, UA 212's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 97 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

87.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 276 completed flights

Avg delay

85 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.36%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

7.2%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 280 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 18 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 212 flies

UA 212 flies LAX to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:00, used on 97 of 280 flights, with 17:15 (50 flights) and 16:49 (50 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 17:0097 flights34.6%
Departs 17:1550 flights17.9%
Departs 16:4950 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 17:00 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 212 runs 19 points better at 87.3%. 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 212 next to LAX to ORD

Every carrier on LAX to ORD combined arrived on time 76.4% of the time across 6,964 flights, so UA 212 is 11 points ahead of it. United flew 3,380 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 80.5% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 8 points.

UA 212 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 212thin sample	280	87.3%	85 min	0.36%	A+
All United Airlines on LAX–ORD	3,380	80.5%	67 min	0.74%	B+
All carriers on LAX–ORD	6,964	76.4%	86 min	1.68%	B
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 212 quarter by quarter

UA 212 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 97.6% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 84.8%, a swing of 13 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 202542 flights97.6%
Oct–Dec 202580 flights84.8%
Jan–Mar 202681 flights86.1%
Apr–Jun 202677 flights85.5%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 212 ranged from 83.7% on Friday to 92.9% on Thursday. With about 40 flights behind each day, a spread of 9 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why UA 212 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 53% of the 2,989 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.

National Airspace System
53%
Late-arriving aircraft
36%
Carrier
10%
Extreme weather
1%

36% 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 2,989 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 36 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 2,989 delay minutes reported on UA 212.

Cancellations are rare at 0.36%, 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

7.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 1,744 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The same number turns up on nine other city pairs in the data, including EWR to MCO (44), PHX to EWR (31) and SFO to AUS (8), but none flew often enough under UA 212 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to LAX to ORD only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 280 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 212

For a booking, UA 212 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 87.3% on time and 0.36% 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