Carrier route record
UAORD→GRR
United Airlines · Chicago to Grand Rapids
- Flights
- 1,084
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 27%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 1,084 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 967 at 75.2% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 75.2% on time across 967 flights.
Key figures
On time
66.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,071 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.01%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
69.5%
Every carrier on ORD to GRR, 4,077 flights
These figures cover 1,084 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on ORD to GRR
United flew 1,084 of the 4,077 flights on ORD to GRR, about 27% of it. Its 66.2% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 75.2% 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 75.2% of the time; American Airlines manages 58.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 478 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 967 | 75.2% | 64 min | 3.93% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 881 | 71.8% | 86 min | 4.09% | C− |
| Republic Airways | 665 | 71.7% | 70 min | 3.46% | C− |
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,084 | 66.2% | 77 min | 1.01% | C |
| American Airlines | 478 | 58.7% | 87 min | 3.77% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 0.0% | 640 min | 0.00% | F+ |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 4.1% 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.
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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.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am127 flights84.1%
- 11am–2pm37 flights62.2%
- 2pm–5pm279 flights73.5%
- 5pm–8pm390 flights55.6%
- 8pm–5am251 flights66.3%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 55.6% on time, against 84.1% 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 390 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 75.8% in September. 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 71.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.5%, a spread of 10 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on ORD to GRR runs when it is late
The 362 late arrivals split 126 under half an hour, 84 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 152 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early192 flights17.9%
- Within 15 min517 flights48.3%
- 15–29 min late126 flights11.8%
- 30–59 min late84 flights7.8%
- 1–2 hours late82 flights7.7%
- 2+ hours late70 flights6.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,071 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
44 of 307 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. In the other direction, 99 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at GRR.
The worst days
Worst days for United on ORD to GRR
The latest arrival of the period was on 5 November 2025, 10 hours 52 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The five worst days are spread across November, March, July and September, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 5 November 2025 | 10 hours 52 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 10 March 2026 | 7 hours 22 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 27 July 2026 | 6 hours 47 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 30 November 2025 | 6 hours 25 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 September 2025 | 6 hours 13 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 28,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 21%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. Across 28,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 28,013 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 84.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.01% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.18%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
14.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 63.0% on time across 1,085 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,084 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. 1,084 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 66.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,071 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 GRR75.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to GRR71.8%
- Republic Airways on ORD to GRR71.7%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.