Carrier route record
UAORD→CID
United Airlines · Chicago to Cedar Rapids
- Flights
- 456
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 17%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on ORD to CID draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 456 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 964 at 72.2% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so United on ORD to CID runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 142 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 448 completed flights
Avg delay
95 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.54%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.8%
Every carrier on ORD to CID, 2,715 flights
These figures cover 456 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.1% 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 ORD to CID
United flew 456 of the 2,715 flights on ORD to CID, about 17% of it. Its 63.4% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 67.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 72.4% to American at 60.3%. Two 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 72.2% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 64.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 813 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 354 | 72.4% | 68 min | 4.80% | C− |
| Envoy Air | 964 | 72.2% | 68 min | 2.49% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 813 | 64.0% | 104 min | 5.17% | D− |
| United Airlines (this page) | 456 | 63.4% | 95 min | 1.54% | D |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 127 | 60.3% | 75 min | 4.72% | D− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.2% 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 ORD to CID
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 22 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am34 flights82.4%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm63 flights67.7%
- 8pm–5am359 flights60.8%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 60.8% on time, against 82.4% for the 8am–11am 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 359 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on ORD to CID through the year
July is the worst month at 40.0% on time, 30 points below October, the best at 70.4%. 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 74 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 75.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 50.7%. 25 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 62% of the 16,000 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.
- 62%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
62% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 15,539 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 82.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.54% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.22%.
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. 16.1% 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 196 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.4% on time across 457 flights, 12 points above 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 12 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 456 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 ORD to CID
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 456 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 63.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 448 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to CID, every carrier
- United on CID to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to CID72.4%
- Envoy Air on ORD to CID72.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to CID64.0%
- American Airlines on ORD to CID60.3%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) 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.