Carrier route record

UAORD→MEM

United Airlines · Chicago to Memphis

Flights: 333
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 13%
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 MEM 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 333 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 822 at 78.6% on time.

Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 78.6% on time across 822 flights.

On time

65.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 321 completed flights

Avg delay

72 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.60%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

72.8%

Every carrier on ORD to MEM, 2,468 flights

These figures cover 333 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.8% 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 MEM

United flew 333 of the 2,468 flights on ORD to MEM, about 13% of it. Its 65.4% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 78.6% to American at 37.5%. 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 78.6% of the time; Republic Airways manages 70.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 465 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to MEM
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air	822	78.6%	55 min	3.16%	B−
SkyWest Airlines	832	71.8%	67 min	1.44%	C
Republic Airways	465	70.7%	74 min	5.38%	C−
United Airlines (this page)thin sample	333	65.4%	72 min	3.60%	C−
American Airlinesthin sample	16	37.5%	66 min	0.00%	F+

Republic Airways cancels 5.4% 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 23 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm12 flights—
5pm–8pm38 flights84.2%
8pm–5am283 flights61.6%

Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.6% on time, against 84.2% for the 5pm–8pm 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 283 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

United on ORD to MEM through the year

Jul–Sep 202592 flights67.8%
Oct–Dec 202577 flights71.1%
Jan–Mar 202686 flights60.0%
Apr–Jun 202678 flights62.7%

Scale runs 50% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 65.4% on time across 333 flights.

United on ORD to MEM did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 71.1% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 60.0%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 83 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 53.3%. 25 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 58% of the 7,931 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
58%
Carrier
28%
National Airspace System
12%
Extreme weather
2%

58% 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 7,931 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 29 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 7,931 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 3.60%, 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. 11.8% 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 491 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 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 84.0% on time across 332 flights, 19 points above 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 19 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 333 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 MEM

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.60% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5pm–8pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 321 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures