Carrier route record
UACLE→ORD
United Airlines · Cleveland to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,173
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 44%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on CLE to ORD lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four 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 2,173 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 543 at 76.6% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate United on CLE to ORD from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,140 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.47%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.6%
Every carrier on CLE to ORD, 4,897 flights
These figures cover 2,173 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 3 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.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on CLE to ORD
United flew 2,173 of the 4,897 flights on CLE to ORD, about 44% of it. Its 77.0% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 77.0% to SkyWest at 68.5%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 76.6% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 68.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 947 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 2,173 | 77.0% | 75 min | 1.47% | B |
| Republic Airways | 543 | 76.6% | 73 min | 6.63% | B− |
| American Airlines | 420 | 74.1% | 118 min | 5.00% | C− |
| Envoy Air | 814 | 73.7% | 73 min | 4.55% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 947 | 68.5% | 104 min | 4.44% | C− |
Republic Airways cancels 6.6% 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.
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on CLE to ORD
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 37 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am478 flights89.9%
- 8am–11am383 flights83.2%
- 11am–2pm352 flights85.7%
- 2pm–5pm502 flights75.1%
- 5pm–8pm441 flights52.6%
- 8pm–5am17 flights—
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 52.6% on time, against 89.9% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 502 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on CLE to ORD through the year
Delays peak in November, when the on-time rate falls to 71.9%. August is the strongest month at 83.7%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 12 points. September was the busiest month here, with 229 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 81.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.8%. 10 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 63% of the 37,000 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.
- 63%National Airspace System
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
63% 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 23,000 minutes out of 37,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 36,670 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.47% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.05%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.8% 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.
At 316 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.3% on time across 2,175 flights, 5 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,173 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking United on CLE to ORD
Put together: avoid the 5pm–8pm departure. It runs 52.6% on time against 89.9% for the 5am–8am slot, and that 37 points is the largest single thing you control here. Republic Airways is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 2,140 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLE to ORD, every carrier
- United on ORD to CLE, the return leg
- Republic Airways on CLE to ORD76.6%
- American Airlines on CLE to ORD74.1%
- Envoy Air on CLE to ORD73.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on CLE to ORD68.5%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- 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.