Flight number record
UA 602
United Airlines · Chicago to Phoenix
- Route
- ORD → PHX
- Departs
- 19:55
- Flights
- 359
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 602, check with United Airlines.
UA 602 sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 359 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so UA 602 runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 93 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 353 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.11%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
12.5%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 359 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Schedule
When UA 602 flies
UA 602 flies ORD to PHX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 19:55, used on 73 of 359 flights, with 20:05 (49 flights) and 19:50 (37 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 19:5573 flights20.3%
- Departs 20:0549 flights13.6%
- Departs 19:5037 flights10.3%
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 19:55 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 602 runs level with that at 68.3%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
Against the route
UA 602 next to ORD to PHX
Every carrier on ORD to PHX combined arrived on time 72.9% of the time across 5,594 flights, so UA 602 is 5 points behind it. United flew 1,938 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.1% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 11 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 602thin sample | 359 | 68.3% | 73 min | 1.11% | C |
| All United Airlines on ORD–PHX | 1,938 | 79.1% | 66 min | 0.41% | B+ |
| All carriers on ORD–PHX | 5,594 | 72.9% | 77 min | 1.72% | C |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 602 quarter by quarter
UA 602 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 77.3% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 61.5%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 90 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 202591 flights69.3%
- Oct–Dec 202587 flights65.1%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights77.3%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights61.5%
Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 602 did best on Saturday at 75.6% on time and worst on Friday at 63.5%. Each day rests on about 51 flights, so a gap of 12 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why UA 602 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 8,141 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
53% 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 8,141 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 8,141 delay minutes reported on UA 602.
Cancellations sit at 1.11% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.56%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,440 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 two other city pairs in the data, including PIT to ORD (107) and RDU to ORD (37), but none flew often enough under UA 602 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ORD to PHX only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 359 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 602
For a booking, UA 602 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 12.5% of its completed flights arrived an hour or more late, which a short layover will not absorb. If the onward flight is on a separate ticket, the risk sits with you.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to PHX, every carrier and departure
- PHX to ORD, the return direction
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) 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
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.