Carrier route record
UAORD→MSN
United Airlines · Chicago to Madison
- Flights
- 936
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 23%
- 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 MSN sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 936 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 651 at 78.4% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 78.4% on time across 651 flights.
Key figures
On time
68.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 917 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.03%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
71.4%
Every carrier on ORD to MSN, 4,029 flights
These figures cover 936 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.0% 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 MSN
United flew 936 of the 4,029 flights on ORD to MSN, about 23% of it. Its 68.7% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 78.4% to PSA at 49.5%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 78.4% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 67.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,266 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 651 | 78.4% | 76 min | 2.46% | B |
| Envoy Air | 1,068 | 76.9% | 67 min | 3.93% | B− |
| United Airlines (this page) | 936 | 68.7% | 70 min | 2.03% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,266 | 67.0% | 97 min | 5.13% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 108 | 49.5% | 127 min | 10.19% | F− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.1% 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.
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on ORD to MSN
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 33 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am56 flights87.5%
- 11am–2pm34 flights94.1%
- 2pm–5pm257 flights76.4%
- 5pm–8pm260 flights60.8%
- 8pm–5am329 flights62.9%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.8% on time, against 94.1% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 329 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on ORD to MSN through the year
January is the weak month at 55.4% on time, against 81.8% in October. 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. September was the busiest month here, with 133 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 76.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 64.3%. 12 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 57% of the 20,000 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
57% 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 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 20,172 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.03% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
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. 12.0% 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 108 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.6% on time across 937 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 936 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 MSN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 936 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 68.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 917 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to MSN, every carrier
- United on MSN to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to MSN78.4%
- Envoy Air on ORD to MSN76.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to MSN67.0%
- PSA Airlines on ORD to MSN49.5%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.