Carrier route record
UAORD→LGA
United Airlines · Chicago to New York
- Flights
- 4,671
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 40%
- 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 LGA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.0% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 4,671 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,284 at 71.5% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 71.5% on time across 1,284 flights.
Key figures
On time
66.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,455 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.98%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
66.6%
Every carrier on ORD to LGA, 11,630 flights
These figures cover 4,671 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on ORD to LGA
United flew 4,671 of the 11,630 flights on ORD to LGA, about 40% of it. Its 66.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 66.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 71.5% to Spirit at 48.8%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 6 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,284 | 71.5% | 69 min | 8.64% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines | 2,309 | 68.7% | 96 min | 5.89% | C− |
| United Airlines (this page) | 4,671 | 66.1% | 83 min | 3.98% | C− |
| American Airlines | 2,990 | 65.6% | 80 min | 4.65% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 92 | 61.0% | 69 min | 16.30% | D− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 284 | 48.8% | 101 min | 9.86% | F− |
Republic Airways cancels 8.6% 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 LGA
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 39 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am602 flights87.4%
- 8am–11am938 flights81.9%
- 11am–2pm994 flights66.9%
- 2pm–5pm881 flights54.4%
- 5pm–8pm1,035 flights48.2%
- 8pm–5am221 flights60.2%
Scale runs 40% to 95%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 48.2% on time, against 87.4% for the 5am–8am 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 1,035 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on ORD to LGA through the year
August is the worst month at 57.6% on time, 27 points below February, the best at 84.5%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 441 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 73.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 55.7%, a spread of 18 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on ORD to LGA runs when it is late
The 1,512 late arrivals split 382 under half an hour, 413 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 717 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early937 flights21.0%
- Within 15 min2,006 flights45.0%
- 15–29 min late382 flights8.6%
- 30–59 min late413 flights9.3%
- 1–2 hours late405 flights9.1%
- 2+ hours late312 flights7.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 4,455 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 1,291 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 127 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 348 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 LGA.
The worst days
Worst days for United on ORD to LGA
The latest arrival of the period was on 18 July 2026, 15 hours 5 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 18 July 2026 | 15 hours 5 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 7 August 2026 | 11 hours 37 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 2 August 2026 | 11 hours 31 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 30 January 2026 | 10 hours 2 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 30 October 2025 | 9 hours 49 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 42% of the 126,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 42%National Airspace System
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 126,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 to one. The split is drawn from 125,704 reported delay minutes.
42% 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 53,000 minutes out of 126,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.98%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
16.1% 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.
The 733 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.
The return leg runs 65.4% on time across 4,671 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 4,671 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 LGA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.98% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 4,455 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to LGA, every carrier
- United on LGA to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to LGA71.5%
- Delta Air Lines on ORD to LGA68.7%
- American Airlines on ORD to LGA65.6%
- Spirit Airlines on ORD to LGA48.8%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- 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.