Carrier route record
UAGRR→ORD
United Airlines · Grand Rapids to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,085
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 27%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on GRR to ORD draws a D. Roughly 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 1,085 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 480 at 74.0% on time.
American Airlines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 74.0% on time across 480 flights.
Key figures
On time
63.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,073 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.11%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
69.1%
Every carrier on GRR to ORD, 4,079 flights
These figures cover 1,085 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on GRR to ORD
United flew 1,085 of the 4,079 flights on GRR to ORD, about 27% of it. Its 63.0% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 74.0% to PSA at 0.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The four 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 480 | 74.0% | 138 min | 3.75% | C− |
| Republic Airways | 666 | 72.5% | 84 min | 3.45% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 879 | 70.4% | 111 min | 3.75% | C− |
| Envoy Air | 967 | 70.2% | 72 min | 3.72% | C− |
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,085 | 63.0% | 78 min | 1.11% | D |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 0.0% | 690 min | 0.00% | F+ |
American Airlines cancels 3.8% 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 GRR to ORD
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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 32 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am394 flights71.0%
- 8am–11am252 flights67.5%
- 11am–2pm33 flights78.8%
- 2pm–5pm125 flights60.0%
- 5pm–8pm278 flights47.3%
- 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: 47.3% 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 394 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 72.4% in September. 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 69.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 56.4%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on GRR to ORD runs when it is late
The 397 late arrivals split 156 under half an hour, 105 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 136 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early115 flights10.7%
- Within 15 min561 flights52.3%
- 15–29 min late156 flights14.5%
- 30–59 min late105 flights9.8%
- 1–2 hours late64 flights6.0%
- 2+ hours late72 flights6.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,073 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 222 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 9 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 184 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at ORD.
The worst days
Worst days for United on GRR to ORD
The latest arrival of the period was on 27 July 2026, 23 hours 44 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across July, March, April, August and December, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 27 July 2026 | 23 hours 44 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 March 2026 | 16 hours 48 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 April 2026 | 9 hours 33 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 31 August 2026 | 7 hours 35 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 17 December 2025 | 7 hours 8 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 48% of the 31,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%National Airspace System
- 29%Carrier
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
48% 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 31,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 30,862 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.11% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
12.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 66.2% on time across 1,084 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,085 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. 1,085 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 63.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,073 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 ORD74.0%
- Republic Airways on GRR to ORD72.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on GRR to ORD70.4%
- Envoy Air on GRR to ORD70.2%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.