Carrier route record
UAORD→LGA
United Airlines · Chicago to New York
- Flights
- 4,662
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 40%
- 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 LGA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.4% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% 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 4,662 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,297 at 71.0% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 71.0% on time across 1,297 flights.
Key figures
On time
67.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,481 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.41%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.3%
Every carrier on ORD to LGA, 11,625 flights
These figures cover 4,662 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.2% 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 LGA
United flew 4,662 of the 11,625 flights on ORD to LGA, about 40% of it. Its 67.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 67.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 71.0% to Spirit at 55.3%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 71.0% of the time; American Airlines manages 64.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,948 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,297 | 71.0% | 69 min | 8.64% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines | 2,296 | 70.3% | 98 min | 4.79% | C− |
| United Airlines (this page) | 4,662 | 67.4% | 81 min | 3.41% | C− |
| American Airlines | 2,948 | 64.7% | 80 min | 4.31% | D− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 92 | 61.0% | 69 min | 16.30% | D− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 330 | 55.3% | 99 min | 8.48% | D− |
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
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. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am605 flights88.7%
- 8am–11am931 flights83.0%
- 11am–2pm1,002 flights68.1%
- 2pm–5pm870 flights56.6%
- 5pm–8pm975 flights49.8%
- 8pm–5am279 flights57.6%
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 49.8% on time, against 88.7% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 1,002 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on ORD to LGA through the year
Delays peak in November, when the on-time rate falls to 58.9%. February is the strongest month at 84.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 26 points. October was the busiest month here, with 441 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 76.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 56.7%. 20 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 118,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%National Airspace System
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%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. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 118,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 117,547 reported delay minutes.
41% 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 49,000 minutes out of 118,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.41%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 15.2% 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.
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. 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 runs 66.7% on time across 4,662 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 4,662 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 3.41% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 4,481 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 LGA71.0%
- Delta Air Lines on ORD to LGA70.3%
- American Airlines on ORD to LGA64.7%
- Spirit Airlines on ORD to LGA55.3%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.