Flight number record
UA 2618
United Airlines · Seattle to Chicago
- Route
- SEA → ORD
- Departs
- 07:00
- Flights
- 283
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2618, check with United Airlines.
UA 2618 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 14 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 2.7 hours. That rests on 283 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 2618's record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 141 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
91.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 279 completed flights
Avg delay
161 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.35%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
5.0%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 283 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 2618 flies
UA 2618 is scheduled to leave Seattle (SEA) at 07:00 local time and reach Chicago (ORD) at 13:15. That slot held for 283 of the 283 scheduled departures in the data, so the figures below describe one steady operation rather than a number that moved around the clock.
- Departs 07:00283 flights100.0%
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 07:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and UA 2618 runs 2 points better at 91.4%. 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 2618 next to SEA to ORD
Every carrier on SEA to ORD combined arrived on time 76.7% of the time across 5,538 flights, so UA 2618 is 15 points ahead of it. United flew 1,488 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 81.6% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 13 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 2618thin sample | 283 | 91.4% | 161 min | 0.35% | A+ |
| All United Airlines on SEA–ORD | 1,488 | 81.6% | 88 min | 0.81% | B+ |
| All carriers on SEA–ORD | 5,538 | 76.7% | 79 min | 1.17% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 2618 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter UA 2618 held fairly steady: 93.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 91.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 92.2% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 88.3% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 5 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights93.3%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights91.3%
- Jan–Mar 20268 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights92.2%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights88.3%
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 2618 ranged from 87.5% on Friday to 95.0% on Wednesday. With about 40 flights behind each day, a spread of 8 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 2618 runs when it is late
UA 2618 often beats the schedule: 103 of 279 completed flights, 37%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When UA 2618 is late it tends to be very late: 14 of its 24 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 11 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early103 flights36.9%
- Within 15 min152 flights54.5%
- 15–29 min late6 flights2.2%
- 30–59 min late4 flights1.4%
- 1–2 hours late3 flights1.1%
- 2+ hours late11 flights3.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 279 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Only 19 of 279 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 2618
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 August 2026, 11 hours 4 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 7 August 2026 | 11 hours 4 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 November 2025 | 7 hours 58 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 2 June 2026 | 7 hours 49 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 April 2026 | 6 hours 17 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 23 July 2026 | 4 hours 30 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why UA 2618 runs late
Carrier accounts for 54% of the 3,853 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Carrier
- 44%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
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 1,690 minutes out of 3,853, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 3,853 delay minutes reported on UA 2618.
Cancellations are rare at 0.35%, 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
5.0% 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 2.7 hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,721 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 three other city pairs in the data, including ORD to RSW (214), ORD to STL (107) and ORD to IAH (19), but none flew often enough under UA 2618 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to SEA to ORD only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 283 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 2618
For a booking, UA 2618 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 91.4% on time and 0.35% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- SEA to ORD, every carrier and departure
- ORD to SEA, the return direction
- United Airlines 747 on the same route87.5%
- Delta Air Lines 2108 on the same route73.0%
- Alaska Airlines 410 on the same route71.4%
- Alaska Airlines 538 on the same route82.5%
- Delta Air Lines 2055 on the same route83.4%
- Alaska Airlines 265 on the same route76.6%
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) 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
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.