Flight number record

UA 561

United Airlines · Chicago to Kansas City

Route: ORD → MCI
Departs: 12:45
Flights: 332
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 561, check with United Airlines.

UA 561 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 a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 332 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.

On time

80.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 329 completed flights

Avg delay

71 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.90%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

7.6%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 332 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 561 flies

UA 561 flies ORD to MCI without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 12:45, used on 193 of 332 flights, with 12:40 (113 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 12:45193 flights58.1%
Departs 12:40113 flights34.0%

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 12:45 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.8%, and UA 561 runs level with that at 80.5%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

UA 561 next to ORD to MCI

Every carrier on ORD to MCI combined arrived on time 70.9% of the time across 4,146 flights, so UA 561 is 10 points ahead of it. United flew 1,435 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 71.6% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 2 points.

UA 561 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 561thin sample	332	80.5%	71 min	0.90%	B+
All United Airlines on ORD–MCI	1,435	71.6%	71 min	1.46%	C
All carriers on ORD–MCI	4,146	70.9%	74 min	2.51%	C
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 561 quarter by quarter

UA 561 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 86.2% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 75.6%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 83 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 202584 flights83.3%
Oct–Dec 202578 flights76.3%
Jan–Mar 202683 flights75.6%
Apr–Jun 202687 flights86.2%

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

By weekday, UA 561 did best on Thursday at 89.4% on time and worst on Friday at 71.4%. Each day rests on about 47 flights, so a gap of 18 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 561 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 4,571 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
55%
Carrier
30%
National Airspace System
12%
Extreme weather
2%

55% 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 4,571 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 27 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 4,571 delay minutes reported on UA 561.

Cancellations sit at 0.90% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

7.6% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The same number turns up on eight other city pairs in the data, including LGA to ORD (86), PIT to ORD (85) and PBI to ORD (24), but none flew often enough under UA 561 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ORD to MCI only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 332 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 561

For a booking, read UA 561 as 80.5% on time with 0.90% cancelled over 332 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