Carrier route record
UACMH→ORD
United Airlines · Columbus to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,213
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 25%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on CMH to ORD draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,213 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,512 at 83.6% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 83.6% on time across 1,512 flights.
Key figures
On time
66.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,191 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.81%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.5%
Every carrier on CMH to ORD, 4,841 flights
These figures cover 1,213 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.2% 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.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on CMH to ORD
United flew 1,213 of the 4,841 flights on CMH to ORD, about 25% of it. Its 66.3% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 85.6% to SkyWest at 64.5%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 83.6% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 64.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 535 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 128 | 85.6% | 95 min | 2.34% | A |
| Republic Airways | 1,512 | 83.6% | 68 min | 2.18% | B |
| Envoy Air | 1,399 | 74.8% | 100 min | 2.07% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 54 | 69.8% | 75 min | 1.85% | C |
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,213 | 66.3% | 85 min | 1.81% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 535 | 64.5% | 105 min | 5.79% | D− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.8% 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 CMH 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 46 points, against 19 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am306 flights73.2%
- 8am–11am166 flights77.6%
- 11am–2pm85 flights83.5%
- 2pm–5pm352 flights75.4%
- 5pm–8pm302 flights37.8%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 30% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 37.8% on time, against 83.5% for the 11am–2pm 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 352 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on CMH to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 41.7% on time, against 79.5% in February. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. October was the busiest month here, with 122 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 71.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 56.6%. 14 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 45% of the 34,000 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.
- 45%National Airspace System
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
45% 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 15,000 minutes out of 34,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 34,065 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.81% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.2% 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.
At 296 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.4% on time across 1,213 flights, 5 points above 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 1,213 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 CMH to ORD
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 79.5% on time and December 41.7%, a swing of 38 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,191 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CMH to ORD, every carrier
- United on ORD to CMH, the return leg
- American Airlines on CMH to ORD85.6%
- Republic Airways on CMH to ORD83.6%
- Envoy Air on CMH to ORD74.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on CMH to ORD64.5%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.