Carrier route record
UAORD→MSP
United Airlines · Chicago to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 2,401
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 38%
- Carriers
- 8
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on ORD to MSP 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 2,401 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 1,084 at 74.2% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 74.2% on time across 1,084 flights.
Key figures
On time
69.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,371 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.04%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.7%
Every carrier on ORD to MSP, 6,324 flights
These figures cover 2,401 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.7% 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 MSP
United flew 2,401 of the 6,324 flights on ORD to MSP, about 38% of it. Its 69.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 69.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of eight carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 74.2% to Frontier at 50.0%. Three 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 74.2% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 67.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 702 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,084 | 74.2% | 66 min | 2.77% | C |
| Republic Airways | 533 | 72.0% | 75 min | 6.19% | C− |
| United Airlines (this page) | 2,401 | 69.5% | 70 min | 1.04% | C |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,411 | 69.0% | 96 min | 1.98% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 43 | 68.3% | 81 min | 4.65% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 702 | 67.1% | 99 min | 3.42% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 137 | 51.1% | 118 min | 0.73% | F+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 13 | 50.0% | 52 min | 7.69% | F− |
Republic Airways cancels 6.2% 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 MSP
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 37 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am281 flights90.7%
- 8am–11am436 flights81.0%
- 11am–2pm361 flights71.2%
- 2pm–5pm634 flights66.8%
- 5pm–8pm209 flights56.6%
- 8pm–5am480 flights54.1%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 54.1% on time, against 90.7% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 634 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on ORD to MSP through the year
December is the weak month at 54.4% on time, against 77.8% 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. October was the busiest month here, with 230 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 73.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 64.1%. 9 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 43% of the 51,000 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
43% 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 51,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 50,847 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 90.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.04% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.21%.
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. 10.7% 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 334 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 69.7% on time across 2,398 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 2,401 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 MSP
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 77.8% on time and December 54.4%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,371 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to MSP, every carrier
- United on MSP to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to MSP74.2%
- Republic Airways on ORD to MSP72.0%
- Delta Air Lines on ORD to MSP69.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to MSP67.1%
- American Airlines on ORD to MSP51.1%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.