Flight number record
UA 747
United Airlines · Seattle to Chicago
- Route
- SEA → ORD
- Departs
- 23:59
- Flights
- 363
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 747, check with United Airlines.
UA 747 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 10 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 363 flights, with a median arrival 15 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 747's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 102 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 361 completed flights
Avg delay
107 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.28%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
6.6%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 363 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 15 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 747 flies
UA 747 flies SEA to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 23:59, used on 53 of 363 flights, with 23:11 (47 flights) and 07:00 (37 flights) next.
- Departs 23:5953 flights14.6%
- Departs 23:1147 flights12.9%
- Departs 07:0037 flights10.2%
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 23:59 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.1%, and UA 747 runs 17 points better at 87.5%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
UA 747 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 747 is 11 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 9 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 747thin sample | 363 | 87.5% | 107 min | 0.28% | 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 747 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter UA 747 held fairly steady: 90.0% in Jul–Sep 2025, 85.7% in Oct–Dec 2025, 91.0% in Jan–Mar 2026, 86.5% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 85.5% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights90.0%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights85.7%
- Jan–Mar 202689 flights91.0%
- Apr–Jun 202690 flights86.5%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights85.5%
Scale runs 75% to 95%.
By weekday, UA 747 ranged from 80.4% on Sunday to 92.3% on Tuesday. With about 52 flights behind each day, a spread of 12 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 747 runs when it is late
UA 747 often beats the schedule: 182 of 361 completed flights, 50%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When UA 747 is late it tends to be very late: 24 of its 45 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 12 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early182 flights50.4%
- Within 15 min134 flights37.1%
- 15–29 min late4 flights1.1%
- 30–59 min late17 flights4.7%
- 1–2 hours late12 flights3.3%
- 2+ hours late12 flights3.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 361 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 61 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 21 still arrived on time. Only 5 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 747
The latest arrival of the period was on 25 January 2026, 7 hours 46 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 25 January 2026 | 7 hours 46 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 January 2026 | 7 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 November 2025 | 6 hours 22 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 2 December 2025 | 5 hours 16 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 2 February 2026 | 4 hours 55 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 747 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 4,793 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
43% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 4,793 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 to one. The split is drawn from 4,793 delay minutes reported on UA 747.
Cancellations are rare at 0.28%, 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
6.6% 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 close to two 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.
Every one of the 363 flights under UA 747 in the data flew SEA to ORD. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 363 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 747
For a booking, UA 747 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 87.5% on time and 0.28% 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
- 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%
- United Airlines 2618 on the same route91.4%
- 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
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.