Carrier route record
UAORD→IND
United Airlines · Chicago to Indianapolis
- Flights
- 750
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 14%
- 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 IND sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 750 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 576 at 80.3% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 80.3% on time across 576 flights.
Key figures
On time
69.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 732 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.27%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.2%
Every carrier on ORD to IND, 5,206 flights
These figures cover 750 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.7% 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 IND
United flew 750 of the 5,206 flights on ORD to IND, about 14% of it. Its 69.4% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 80.3% to American at 67.4%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 80.3% of the time; American Airlines manages 67.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 515 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 576 | 80.3% | 57 min | 1.39% | B |
| Republic Airways | 2,716 | 76.5% | 79 min | 3.35% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 649 | 69.5% | 79 min | 6.47% | C− |
| United Airlines (this page) | 750 | 69.4% | 71 min | 2.27% | C |
| American Airlines | 515 | 67.4% | 71 min | 6.02% | C− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 6.5% 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.
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 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am25 flights—
- 11am–2pm115 flights82.0%
- 2pm–5pm288 flights76.3%
- 5pm–8pm150 flights61.9%
- 8pm–5am172 flights53.6%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 53.6% on time, against 82.0% for the 11am–2pm 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 288 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on ORD to IND through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 77.2% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. October was the busiest month here, with 97 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.1% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 60.4%. 18 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 16,000 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
- 13%National Airspace System
- 10%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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 15,961 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.27% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.13%.
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. 11.7% 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 177 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 67.8% on time across 749 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. 750 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 IND
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 750 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 69.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 732 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to IND, every carrier
- United on IND to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to IND80.3%
- Republic Airways on ORD to IND76.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to IND69.5%
- American Airlines on ORD to IND67.4%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Indianapolis International (IND) 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.