Flight number record

UA 2653

United Airlines · Chicago to Raleigh

Route: ORD → RDU
Departs: 10:52
Flights: 265
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2653, check with United Airlines.

UA 2653 lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 265 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.

On time

80.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 263 completed flights

Avg delay

58 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.75%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

5.7%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 265 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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 2653 flies

UA 2653 flies ORD to RDU without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 10:52, used on 46 of 265 flights, with 10:40 (42 flights) and 11:00 (37 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 10:5246 flights17.4%
Departs 10:4042 flights15.8%
Departs 11:0037 flights14.0%

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 10:52 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and UA 2653 runs 4 points worse at 80.6%. 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 2653 next to ORD to RDU

Every carrier on ORD to RDU combined arrived on time 73.3% of the time across 3,592 flights, so UA 2653 is 7 points ahead of it. United flew 1,298 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 76.8% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 2 points.

UA 2653 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 2653thin sample	265	80.6%	58 min	0.75%	B+
All United Airlines on ORD–RDU	1,298	76.8%	77 min	1.00%	B
All carriers on ORD–RDU	3,592	73.3%	78 min	2.12%	C
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 2653 quarter by quarter

UA 2653 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 86.2% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 72.6%, a swing of 14 points on roughly 88 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 202587 flights86.2%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights82.6%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights72.6%

Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 2653 did best on Tuesday at 89.7% on time and worst on Friday at 69.2%. Each day rests on about 38 flights, so a gap of 21 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 2653 runs late

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 2,955 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
38%
National Airspace System
29%
Late-arriving aircraft
28%
Extreme weather
5%

The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,119 of the 2,955 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,955 delay minutes reported on UA 2653.

Cancellations are rare at 0.75%, 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

5.7% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 646 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The same number turns up on six other city pairs in the data, including TUL to ORD (41), ORD to BWI (41) and SMF to LAX (22), but none flew often enough under UA 2653 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ORD to RDU only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 265 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 2653

For a booking, read UA 2653 as 80.6% on time with 0.75% cancelled over 265 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