Carrier route record

UAMEM→ORD

United Airlines · Memphis to Chicago

Flights: 332
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 13%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.

United on MEM to ORD earns a B−. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 332 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 821 at 77.1% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, United's MEM to ORD record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 64 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 318 completed flights

Avg delay

98 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.61%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

76.0%

Every carrier on MEM to ORD, 2,473 flights

These figures cover 332 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

United against every carrier on MEM to ORD

United flew 332 of the 2,473 flights on MEM to ORD, about 13% of it. Its 84.0% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.0% to American at 17.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The three 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.

On-time performance by carrier on MEM to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines (this page)thin sample	332	84.0%	98 min	3.61%	B−
Envoy Air	821	77.1%	62 min	3.05%	B−
Republic Airways	468	75.6%	69 min	4.70%	B−
SkyWest Airlines	835	73.1%	90 min	2.28%	C
American Airlinesthin sample	17	17.6%	121 min	0.00%	F+

Republic Airways cancels 4.7% 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 is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 332 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split United's MEM to ORD record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 84.0% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

United on MEM to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 202592 flights82.2%
Oct–Dec 202577 flights83.8%
Jan–Mar 202685 flights79.5%
Apr–Jun 202678 flights90.8%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 84.0% on time across 332 flights.

United on MEM to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 90.8% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 79.5%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 83 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 91.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.7%. 15 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. Carrier accounts for 42% of the 4,973 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.

Carrier
42%
National Airspace System
39%
Late-arriving aircraft
18%

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 1,962 minutes out of 4,973, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 4,973 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 2,101 of the 4,973 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations run at 3.61%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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

6.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 491 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 65.4% on time across 333 flights, 19 points below 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 19 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 332 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 MEM to ORD

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.61% 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. 318 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures