Carrier route record

UAMSY→ORD

United Airlines · New Orleans to Chicago

Flights: 842
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 35%
Carriers: 7

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

United on MSY to ORD lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 842 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 465 at 82.1% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, United's MSY to ORD record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 47 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 826 completed flights

Avg delay

79 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.19%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.1%

Every carrier on MSY to ORD, 2,400 flights

These figures cover 842 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 MSY to ORD

United flew 842 of the 2,400 flights on MSY to ORD, about 35% of it. Its 82.3% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 82.3% to Frontier at 63.6%. Four of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 82.1% of the time; American Airlines manages 70.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 400 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on MSY to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines (this page)	842	82.3%	79 min	1.19%	B
Envoy Air	465	82.1%	68 min	1.72%	B
Republic Airwaysthin sample	336	78.0%	73 min	2.68%	B
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	131	72.9%	61 min	1.53%	C
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	215	70.5%	67 min	6.51%	C−
American Airlines	400	70.3%	137 min	2.25%	C
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	11	63.6%	67 min	0.00%	D+

Envoy leads American by 12 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh 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 17 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am234 flights90.0%
8am–11am219 flights89.0%
11am–2pm26 flights—
2pm–5pm363 flights73.0%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.0% of the time, against 73.0% for the afternoon window. That is 17 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 363 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

United on MSY to ORD through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, June worst

June is the worst month at 72.9% on time, 21 points below September, the best at 93.8%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. March was the busiest month here, with 91 flights.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 91.0% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 78.9%. 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 44% of the 12,000 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.

National Airspace System
44%
Late-arriving aircraft
38%
Carrier
13%
Extreme weather
6%

38% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 11,502 reported delay minutes.

44% 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 5,011 minutes out of 12,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations sit at 1.19% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.71%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.3% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 837 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.1% on time across 842 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 842 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 MSY to ORD

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 842 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 82.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 826 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