Carrier route record
UALGA→ORD
United Airlines · New York to Chicago
- Flights
- 4,662
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 40%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on LGA to ORD carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.7% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 4,662 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 2,296 at 68.6% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 68.6% on time across 2,296 flights.
Key figures
On time
66.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,479 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.69%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.3%
Every carrier on LGA to ORD, 11,625 flights
These figures cover 4,662 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.7% 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 LGA to ORD
United flew 4,662 of the 11,625 flights on LGA to ORD, about 40% of it. Its 66.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 67.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 68.6% to SkyWest at 61.8%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The three carriers here are closely matched: about a point 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 2,296 | 68.6% | 96 min | 4.75% | C− |
| Republic Airways | 1,298 | 68.6% | 62 min | 9.32% | C− |
| American Airlines | 2,947 | 67.5% | 94 min | 4.48% | C− |
| United Airlines (this page) | 4,662 | 66.7% | 88 min | 3.69% | C− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 330 | 62.1% | 95 min | 7.27% | D− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 92 | 61.8% | 90 min | 17.39% | D− |
Republic Airways cancels 9.3% 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 LGA 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 41 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am657 flights86.1%
- 8am–11am988 flights82.5%
- 11am–2pm593 flights71.6%
- 2pm–5pm941 flights58.3%
- 5pm–8pm929 flights44.6%
- 8pm–5am554 flights60.0%
Scale runs 35% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 44.6% on time, against 86.1% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 988 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on LGA to ORD through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 78.9% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. October was the busiest month here, with 441 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 72.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 58.3%. 14 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 132,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 39%National Airspace System
- 14%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% 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 132,000 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 131,724 reported delay minutes.
39% 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 51,000 minutes out of 132,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.69%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 25 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
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. 14.7% 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 733 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 67.4% on time across 4,662 flights, within half a point 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 4,662 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 LGA to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.69% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 4,479 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to ORD, every carrier
- United on ORD to LGA, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on LGA to ORD68.6%
- Republic Airways on LGA to ORD68.6%
- American Airlines on LGA to ORD67.5%
- Spirit Airlines on LGA to ORD62.1%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.