Carrier route record
UAORD→AUS
United Airlines · Chicago to Austin
- Flights
- 1,471
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 46%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on ORD to AUS lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,471 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate United on ORD to AUS from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,453 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.09%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.0%
Every carrier on ORD to AUS, 3,169 flights
These figures cover 1,471 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 ORD to AUS
United flew 1,471 of the 3,169 flights on ORD to AUS, about 46% of it. Its 77.9% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 77.9% to Southwest at 62.3%. Four of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,471 | 77.9% | 67 min | 1.09% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 88 | 73.3% | 68 min | 2.27% | C |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 95 | 68.9% | 54 min | 5.26% | C− |
| American Airlines | 1,190 | 67.0% | 82 min | 2.86% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 118 | 66.1% | 122 min | 5.08% | C− |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 207 | 62.3% | 60 min | 0.97% | D+ |
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 37 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am179 flights91.0%
- 8am–11am352 flights81.1%
- 11am–2pm583 flights78.2%
- 2pm–5pm7 flights—
- 5pm–8pm228 flights74.4%
- 8pm–5am122 flights53.8%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 53.8% on time, against 91.0% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 583 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on ORD to AUS through the year
July is the worst month at 63.0% on time, 26 points below February, the best at 89.3%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 146 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 83.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.5%. 10 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 22,000 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
47% 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 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 21,595 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 91.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.09% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.14%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.8% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 977 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 74.9% on time across 1,470 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,471 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 ORD to AUS
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 89.3% on time and July 63.0%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,453 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to AUS, every carrier
- United on AUS to ORD, the return leg
- American Airlines on ORD to AUS67.0%
- Frontier Airlines on ORD to AUS66.1%
- Southwest Airlines on ORD to AUS62.3%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.