Carrier route record
UAGRR→ORD
United Airlines · Grand Rapids to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,075
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 27%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on GRR to ORD draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,075 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 532 at 75.6% on time.
American Airlines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 75.6% on time across 532 flights.
Key figures
On time
65.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,061 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.30%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.3%
Every carrier on GRR to ORD, 4,038 flights
These figures cover 1,075 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.5% 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 GRR to ORD
United flew 1,075 of the 4,038 flights on GRR to ORD, about 27% of it. Its 65.1% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 68.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 75.6% to PSA at 0.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 75.6% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 64.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 837 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 532 | 75.6% | 133 min | 3.38% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 661 | 70.9% | 76 min | 2.87% | C |
| Envoy Air | 931 | 69.5% | 67 min | 3.65% | C− |
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,075 | 65.1% | 73 min | 1.30% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 837 | 64.5% | 105 min | 3.23% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 0.0% | 690 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Envoy Air cancels 3.6% 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 GRR 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 30 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am425 flights73.6%
- 8am–11am265 flights69.1%
- 11am–2pm33 flights78.8%
- 2pm–5pm42 flights61.9%
- 5pm–8pm307 flights49.0%
- 8pm–5am3 flights—
Scale runs 40% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 49.0% on time, against 78.8% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 425 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on GRR to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 45.3% on time, against 79.2% in July. 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 127 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 71.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 59.4%. 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 46% of the 27,000 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.
- 46%National Airspace System
- 31%Carrier
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Extreme weather
46% 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 12,000 minutes out of 27,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 26,922 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.30% 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. 11.5% 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 137 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 runs 66.9% on time across 1,073 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. 1,075 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 GRR to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,075 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 65.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,061 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- GRR to ORD, every carrier
- United on ORD to GRR, the return leg
- American Airlines on GRR to ORD75.6%
- Republic Airways on GRR to ORD70.9%
- Envoy Air on GRR to ORD69.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on GRR to ORD64.5%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- 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.