Carrier route record

UACOS→ORD

United Airlines · Colorado Springs to Chicago

Flights: 180
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 18%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.

United on COS to ORD lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 180 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate United on COS to ORD from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

80.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 175 completed flights

Avg delay

62 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.11%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.6%

Every carrier on COS to ORD, 1,001 flights

These figures cover 180 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 COS to ORD

United flew 180 of the 1,001 flights on COS to ORD, about 18% of it. Its 80.6% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 80.6% to SkyWest at 73.3%.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on COS to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines (this page)thin sample	180	80.6%	62 min	1.11%	B
SkyWest Airlines	821	73.3%	120 min	2.07%	C

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 16 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am32 flights93.8%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm148 flights77.6%
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 77.6% on time against 93.8% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 148 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

United on COS to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 202593 flights76.7%
Oct–Dec 202525 flights—
Apr–Jun 202662 flights81.7%

Scale runs 70% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 80.6% on time across 180 flights.

Split by quarter, United on COS to ORD logged 93 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 25 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 62 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 80.6% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why United runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 47% of the 2,090 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.

National Airspace System
47%
Late-arriving aircraft
27%
Carrier
22%
Extreme weather
4%

47% 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 992 minutes out of 2,090, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 2,090 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 1.11% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.67%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.3% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 911 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 82.6% on time across 179 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. 180 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 COS to ORD

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 180 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 80.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 175 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures