Carrier route record
UADFW→ORD
United Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,010
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 29%
- Carriers
- 7
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on DFW 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 an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 2,010 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 431 at 69.4% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so United on DFW to ORD runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 59 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,964 completed flights
Avg delay
94 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.79%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.6%
Every carrier on DFW to ORD, 6,964 flights
These figures cover 2,010 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.8% 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 DFW to ORD
United flew 2,010 of the 6,964 flights on DFW to ORD, about 29% of it. Its 71.7% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 67.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 87.5% to American at 65.4%. Four of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 8 | 87.5% | 15 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 12 | 75.0% | 61 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 2,010 | 71.7% | 94 min | 1.79% | C |
| Frontier Airlines | 431 | 69.4% | 95 min | 3.25% | C− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 135 | 68.5% | 76 min | 5.19% | C− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 129 | 66.9% | 93 min | 1.55% | C |
| American Airlines | 4,239 | 65.4% | 77 min | 3.85% | C− |
American Airlines 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.
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DFW 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 22 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am342 flights82.7%
- 8am–11am351 flights82.7%
- 11am–2pm342 flights72.9%
- 2pm–5pm608 flights63.8%
- 5pm–8pm305 flights63.7%
- 8pm–5am62 flights60.7%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 60.7% on time, against 82.7% 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 608 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DFW to ORD through the year
June is the worst month at 64.6% on time, 18 points below February, the best at 82.3%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 201 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.9%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 52,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%National Airspace System
- 16%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 52,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 52,380 reported delay minutes.
38% 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 20,000 minutes out of 52,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.79% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.50%.
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. 12.8% 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.
The 802 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 73.2% on time across 2,010 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.
The sample behind these figures is 2,010 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 DFW to ORD
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 82.3% on time and June 64.6%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,964 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to ORD, every carrier
- United on ORD to DFW, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to ORD69.4%
- Envoy Air on DFW to ORD68.5%
- Spirit Airlines on DFW to ORD66.9%
- American Airlines on DFW to ORD65.4%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.