Carrier route record
UAIND→ORD
United Airlines · Indianapolis to Chicago
- Flights
- 749
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 14%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on IND 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 749 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 2,713 at 82.4% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 82.4% on time across 2,713 flights.
Key figures
On time
67.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 729 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.40%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.5%
Every carrier on IND to ORD, 5,201 flights
These figures cover 749 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.9% 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 IND to ORD
United flew 749 of the 5,201 flights on IND to ORD, about 14% of it. Its 67.8% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 76.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 82.4% to SkyWest at 67.2%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 82.4% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 67.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 649 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 2,713 | 82.4% | 70 min | 2.06% | B |
| Envoy Air | 576 | 77.6% | 89 min | 1.91% | B |
| United Airlines (this page) | 749 | 67.8% | 82 min | 2.40% | C |
| American Airlines | 514 | 67.3% | 87 min | 6.42% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 649 | 67.2% | 109 min | 6.32% | C− |
American Airlines cancels 6.4% 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.
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 42 points, against 15 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am280 flights80.4%
- 8am–11am41 flights72.5%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm322 flights65.5%
- 5pm–8pm103 flights38.0%
- 8pm–5am3 flights—
Scale runs 30% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 38.0% on time, against 80.4% 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 322 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on IND to ORD through the year
January is the weak month at 52.2% on time, against 76.5% 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 97 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 73.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 59.6%. 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 46% of the 19,000 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
- 33%Carrier
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%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 8,806 minutes out of 19,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 19,169 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.40% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.27%.
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. 9.9% 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 177 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 69.4% on time across 750 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. 749 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 IND to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 749 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 67.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 729 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- IND to ORD, every carrier
- United on ORD to IND, the return leg
- Republic Airways on IND to ORD82.4%
- Envoy Air on IND to ORD77.6%
- American Airlines on IND to ORD67.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on IND to ORD67.2%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- 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.