Flight number record

UA 426

United Airlines · Detroit to Chicago

Route: DTW → ORD
Departs: 09:00
Flights: 345
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 426, check with United Airlines.

UA 426 sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 345 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so UA 426 runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 82 extra late arrivals.

On time

69.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 340 completed flights

Avg delay

56 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.45%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

7.1%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 345 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.

Schedule

When UA 426 flies

UA 426 flies DTW to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 09:00, used on 113 of 345 flights, with 07:14 (49 flights) and 14:10 (47 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 09:00113 flights32.8%
Departs 07:1449 flights14.2%
Departs 14:1047 flights13.6%

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 09:00 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and UA 426 runs 15 points worse at 69.4%. 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 426 next to DTW to ORD

Every carrier on DTW to ORD combined arrived on time 72.0% of the time across 5,959 flights, so UA 426 is 3 points behind it. United flew 815 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 70.2% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 10 points.

UA 426 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 426thin sample	345	69.4%	56 min	1.45%	C
All United Airlines on DTW–ORD	815	70.2%	71 min	1.35%	C
All carriers on DTW–ORD	5,959	72.0%	90 min	3.02%	C−
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 426 quarter by quarter

UA 426 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 81.3% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 61.8%, a swing of 20 points on roughly 86 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 202592 flights68.1%
Oct–Dec 202578 flights61.8%
Jan–Mar 202684 flights64.6%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights81.3%

Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 426 did best on Thursday at 75.0% on time and worst on Friday at 60.4%. Each day rests on about 49 flights, so a gap of 15 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 426 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 53% of the 5,793 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
25%
Carrier
22%
Extreme weather
0%

53% 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 3,096 minutes out of 5,793, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 5,793 delay minutes reported on UA 426.

Cancellations sit at 1.45% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

7.1% 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 same number turns up on five other city pairs in the data, including ORD to MSY (56), ORD to IAD (36) and ORD to ALB (23), but none flew often enough under UA 426 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DTW to ORD only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 345 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 426

For a booking, read UA 426 as 69.4% on time with 1.45% cancelled over 345 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