Carrier route record
UAORD→GRR
United Airlines · Chicago to Grand Rapids
- Flights
- 1,073
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 27%
- 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 GRR draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,073 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 929 at 76.1% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 76.1% on time across 929 flights.
Key figures
On time
66.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,059 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.21%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.0%
Every carrier on ORD to GRR, 4,034 flights
These figures cover 1,073 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.3% 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 GRR
United flew 1,073 of the 4,034 flights on ORD to GRR, about 27% of it. Its 66.9% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 76.1% to PSA at 0.0%. One 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 76.1% of the time; American Airlines manages 58.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 531 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 929 | 76.1% | 63 min | 3.88% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 661 | 74.5% | 71 min | 3.03% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 838 | 70.8% | 89 min | 3.46% | C− |
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,073 | 66.9% | 78 min | 1.21% | C |
| American Airlines | 531 | 58.7% | 85 min | 3.39% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 0.0% | 640 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Envoy Air cancels 3.9% 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.
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 17 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am65 flights86.2%
- 11am–2pm16 flights—
- 2pm–5pm308 flights73.9%
- 5pm–8pm389 flights58.2%
- 8pm–5am295 flights66.9%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.2% on time, against 86.2% 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 389 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on ORD to GRR through the year
December is the weak month at 50.8% on time, against 79.4% in August. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. October was the busiest month here, with 126 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 70.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.0%. 8 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 27,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
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 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 27,182 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 86.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.21% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.09%.
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. 14.3% 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 137 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 runs 65.1% on time across 1,075 flights, within 2 points 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. 1,073 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 GRR
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,073 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 66.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,059 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to GRR, every carrier
- United on GRR to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to GRR76.1%
- Republic Airways on ORD to GRR74.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to GRR70.8%
- American Airlines on ORD to GRR58.7%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.