Carrier route record
UABDL→ORD
United Airlines · Hartford to Chicago
- Flights
- 841
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 36%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on BDL to ORD sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 841 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 644 at 78.2% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so United on BDL to ORD runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 61 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 825 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.55%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.0%
Every carrier on BDL to ORD, 2,349 flights
These figures cover 841 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.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on BDL to ORD
United flew 841 of the 2,349 flights on BDL to ORD, about 36% of it. Its 71.5% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 78.3% to SkyWest at 70.6%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 141 | 78.3% | 60 min | 2.13% | B |
| Republic Airways | 644 | 78.2% | 69 min | 3.88% | B− |
| American Airlines | 461 | 73.2% | 154 min | 3.25% | C− |
| United Airlines (this page) | 841 | 71.5% | 78 min | 1.55% | C |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 262 | 70.6% | 71 min | 2.29% | C |
Republic Airways cancels 3.9% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 41 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am318 flights89.7%
- 8am–11am43 flights85.4%
- 11am–2pm89 flights88.6%
- 2pm–5pm127 flights48.4%
- 5pm–8pm262 flights53.1%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.7% of the time, against 48.4% for the afternoon window. That is 41 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 318 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on BDL to ORD through the year
July is the worst month at 56.7% on time, 31 points below May, the best at 87.9%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. October was the busiest month here, with 108 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 77.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.7%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 56% of the 18,000 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.
- 56%National Airspace System
- 15%Extreme weather
- 15%Carrier
- 14%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 15% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 18,288 reported delay minutes.
56% 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 10,000 minutes out of 18,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.55% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.36%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.9% 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 783 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 return leg runs 73.6% on time across 841 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 841 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 United on BDL to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 841 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 71.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 825 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BDL to ORD, every carrier
- United on ORD to BDL, the return leg
- Envoy Air on BDL to ORD78.3%
- Republic Airways on BDL to ORD78.2%
- American Airlines on BDL to ORD73.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on BDL to ORD70.6%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.