Flight number record

UA 212

United Airlines · Los Angeles to Chicago

Route: LAX → ORD
Departs: 17:00
Flights: 308
Period: September 2025 to August 2026

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

UA 212 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 9 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 308 flights, with a median arrival 17 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, UA 212's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 91 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 302 completed flights

Avg delay

108 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.32%

National rate is 1.89%

1 hour+ late

7.9%

National rate is 8.3%

These figures cover 308 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 17 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.

Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

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 125 of 308 flights, with 17:15 (50 flights) and 16:49 (50 flights) next.

Departs 17:00125 flights40.6%
Departs 17:1550 flights16.2%
Departs 16:4950 flights16.2%

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 17:00 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and UA 212 runs 18 points better at 86.4%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.

Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

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 7,119 flights, so UA 212 is 10 points ahead of it. United flew 3,414 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.9% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, 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	308	86.4%	108 min	0.32%	A+
All United Airlines on LAX–ORD	3,414	79.9%	69 min	0.70%	B+
All carriers on LAX–ORD	7,119	76.4%	84 min	1.39%	B
United Airlines, whole network	830,825	78.8%	73 min	1.02%	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 96.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 84.2%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 62 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 flights96.7%
Oct–Dec 202580 flights84.8%
Jan–Mar 202681 flights86.1%
Apr–Jun 202677 flights85.5%
Jul–Sep 202640 flights84.2%

Scale runs 75% to 100%.

By weekday, UA 212 did best on Tuesday at 92.9% on time and worst on Saturday at 80.6%. Each day rests on about 44 flights, so a gap of 12 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Arrival by arrival

How late UA 212 runs when it is late

UA 212 often beats the schedule: 170 of 302 completed flights, 56%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When UA 212 is late it tends to be very late: 24 of its 41 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 11 were two hours or more.

15+ min early170 flights56.3%
Within 15 min91 flights30.1%
15–29 min late7 flights2.3%
30–59 min late10 flights3.3%
1–2 hours late13 flights4.3%
2+ hours late11 flights3.6%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 302 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

13 of 48 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 27% of them. Only 6 left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for UA 212

The latest arrival of the period was on 27 July 2026, 15 hours 23 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as national airspace system delay.

The latest arrivals of UA 212 in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
27 July 2026	15 hours 23 minutes	Carrier
31 March 2026	3 hours 57 minutes	National Airspace System
10 June 2026	3 hours 34 minutes	National Airspace System
27 April 2026	3 hours 18 minutes	National Airspace System
3 July 2026	2 hours 57 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why UA 212 runs late

National Airspace System accounts for 44% of the 4,433 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

National Airspace System
44%
Late-arriving aircraft
30%
Carrier
26%
Extreme weather
0%

44% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,954 minutes out of 4,433, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 4,433 delay minutes reported on UA 212.

Cancellations are rare at 0.32%, 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

7.9% 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 close to two hours, 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 seven other city pairs in the data, including EWR to LAX (68), SFO to AUS (8) and EYW to ORD (5), 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. 308 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: 86.4% on time and 0.32% 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures