Carrier route record
UAORD→FLL
United Airlines · Chicago to Fort Lauderdale
- Flights
- 1,478
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 43%
- 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 FLL lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About 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 1,478 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 846 at 71.7% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate United on ORD to FLL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,460 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.81%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.8%
Every carrier on ORD to FLL, 3,424 flights
These figures cover 1,478 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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 FLL
United flew 1,478 of the 3,424 flights on ORD to FLL, about 43% of it. Its 78.5% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 78.5% to Spirit at 65.3%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 71.7% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 65.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 916 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,478 | 78.5% | 67 min | 0.81% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 846 | 71.7% | 82 min | 1.54% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 151 | 67.6% | 86 min | 3.31% | C− |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 33 | 65.6% | 52 min | 3.03% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines | 916 | 65.3% | 85 min | 4.48% | C− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 4.5% 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 FLL
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 21 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am392 flights90.0%
- 8am–11am438 flights75.5%
- 11am–2pm176 flights78.9%
- 2pm–5pm288 flights73.1%
- 5pm–8pm184 flights69.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.0% of the time, against 69.1% for the evening window. That is 21 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 438 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on ORD to FLL through the year
April is the best month on the calendar at 87.0% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 167 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.7%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 21,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 8%Extreme weather
37% 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 21,000 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 20,946 reported delay minutes.
32% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 6,722 minutes out of 21,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.81%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.7% 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 1,182 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 74.7% on time across 1,479 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,478 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 FLL
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 87.0% on time and March 69.2%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,460 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to FLL, every carrier
- United on FLL to ORD, the return leg
- American Airlines on ORD to FLL71.7%
- Frontier Airlines on ORD to FLL67.6%
- Spirit Airlines on ORD to FLL65.3%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) 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.