Carrier route record

UAORD→CLT

United Airlines · Chicago to Charlotte

Flights: 612
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 14%
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 CLT sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 612 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 377 at 79.7% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so United on ORD to CLT runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 70 extra late arrivals.

On time

70.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 605 completed flights

Avg delay

76 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.98%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

73.5%

Every carrier on ORD to CLT, 4,306 flights

These figures cover 612 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.6% 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 CLT

United flew 612 of the 4,306 flights on ORD to CLT, about 14% of it. Its 70.6% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 100.0% to SkyWest at 53.6%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 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 ORD to CLT
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	1	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
Republic Airways	377	79.7%	78 min	2.12%	B
American Airlines	2,999	74.6%	85 min	2.43%	C
United Airlines (this page)	612	70.6%	76 min	0.98%	C+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	157	67.1%	121 min	3.18%	C−
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	160	53.6%	52 min	4.38%	F−

No carrier stands out. Republic tops the table at 79.7%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

Flight by flight

United flight numbers on ORD to CLT

UA 263514:1570.8% · 277 flights

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 35 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am107 flights93.4%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm294 flights70.1%
5pm–8pm193 flights58.3%
8pm–5am18 flights—

Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.3% on time, against 93.4% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 294 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

United on ORD to CLT through the year

Jul–Sep 2025269 flights71.9%
Oct–Dec 2025136 flights74.3%
Jan–Mar 202682 flights77.5%
Apr–Jun 2026125 flights59.0%

Scale runs 50% to 85%. 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 70.6% on time across 612 flights.

United on ORD to CLT did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 77.5% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 59.0%, a swing of 19 points on roughly 153 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 76.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 64.1%. 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 14,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
50%
Carrier
26%
National Airspace System
19%
Extreme weather
6%

50% 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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 13,512 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 93.4% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 0.98% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.16%.

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. 10.6% 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 599 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 71.1% on time across 611 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.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 612 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 CLT

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 612 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 70.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 605 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