Carrier route record
UAORD→CVG
United Airlines · Chicago to Cincinnati
- Flights
- 945
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 20%
- 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 CVG sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 945 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,368 at 79.3% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 79.3% on time across 1,368 flights.
Key figures
On time
72.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 929 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.69%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.2%
Every carrier on ORD to CVG, 4,647 flights
These figures cover 945 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.1% 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 CVG
United flew 945 of the 4,647 flights on ORD to CVG, about 20% of it. Its 72.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 72.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 79.3% to American at 58.2%. 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 79.3% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 63.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 896 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,368 | 79.3% | 66 min | 3.36% | B− |
| United Airlines (this page) | 945 | 72.4% | 69 min | 1.69% | C |
| Envoy Air | 1,333 | 71.4% | 71 min | 2.40% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 37 | 68.6% | 125 min | 5.41% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 896 | 63.4% | 89 min | 5.36% | D− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 68 | 58.2% | 89 min | 1.47% | D |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.4% 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.
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 28 points, against 16 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am21 flights—
- 8am–11am162 flights83.1%
- 11am–2pm87 flights79.1%
- 2pm–5pm282 flights72.7%
- 5pm–8pm297 flights68.2%
- 8pm–5am96 flights55.4%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 55.4% on time, against 83.1% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 297 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on ORD to CVG through the year
July is the worst month at 57.1% on time, 24 points below May, the best at 81.1%. 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. September was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.2%. 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 44% of the 18,000 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.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
44% 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 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 17,589 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 83.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.69% 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. 10.1% 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 264 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 68.5% on time across 946 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 945 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 CVG
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 945 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 72.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 929 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to CVG, every carrier
- United on CVG to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to CVG79.3%
- Envoy Air on ORD to CVG71.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to CVG63.4%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.