Carrier route record
UAORD→CMH
United Airlines · Chicago to Columbus
- Flights
- 1,213
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 25%
- 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 CMH sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,213 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,507 at 76.6% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 76.6% on time across 1,507 flights.
Key figures
On time
71.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,195 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.48%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.1%
Every carrier on ORD to CMH, 4,843 flights
These figures cover 1,213 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.8% 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 CMH
United flew 1,213 of the 4,843 flights on ORD to CMH, about 25% of it. Its 71.4% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 76.6% to American at 61.6%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 76.6% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 68.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 535 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,507 | 76.6% | 79 min | 3.19% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 1,407 | 74.0% | 71 min | 2.06% | C |
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,213 | 71.4% | 70 min | 1.48% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 535 | 68.3% | 80 min | 4.86% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 54 | 67.3% | 77 min | 3.70% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 127 | 61.6% | 86 min | 1.57% | D |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 4.9% 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 CMH
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 42 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am246 flights88.2%
- 8am–11am205 flights80.0%
- 11am–2pm145 flights74.3%
- 2pm–5pm303 flights64.1%
- 5pm–8pm188 flights65.4%
- 8pm–5am126 flights46.2%
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 46.2% on time, against 88.2% 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 303 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on ORD to CMH through the year
July is the worst month at 60.2% on time, 19 points below May, the best at 79.6%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 122 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.5%. 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 24,000 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
49% 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 24,000 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 24,037 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 88.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.48% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
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. 11.8% 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 296 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 66.3% on time across 1,213 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,213 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 CMH
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 79.6% on time and July 60.2%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,195 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to CMH, every carrier
- United on CMH to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to CMH76.6%
- Envoy Air on ORD to CMH74.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to CMH68.3%
- American Airlines on ORD to CMH61.6%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) 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.