Carrier route record
UAORD→OMA
United Airlines · Chicago to Omaha
- Flights
- 1,379
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 44%
- 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 OMA 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 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,379 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 825 at 75.7% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so United on ORD to OMA runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 77 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,358 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.52%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
69.3%
Every carrier on ORD to OMA, 3,105 flights
These figures cover 1,379 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on ORD to OMA
United flew 1,379 of the 3,105 flights on ORD to OMA, about 44% of it. Its 69.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 69.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 75.7% to American at 53.4%. 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 75.7% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 63.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 452 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 825 | 75.7% | 56 min | 3.52% | B− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 199 | 72.9% | 63 min | 3.52% | C− |
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,379 | 69.6% | 66 min | 1.52% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 452 | 63.7% | 75 min | 3.10% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 8 | 57.1% | 60 min | 12.50% | D− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 242 | 53.4% | 76 min | 1.65% | F |
Envoy Air cancels 3.5% 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 OMA
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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 28 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am316 flights84.4%
- 11am–2pm333 flights74.6%
- 2pm–5pm303 flights67.1%
- 5pm–8pm4 flights—
- 8pm–5am423 flights56.4%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.4% on time, against 84.4% for the 8am–11am 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 423 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on ORD to OMA through the year
December is the weak month at 51.3% on time, against 82.8% in February. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 154 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.8%, a spread of 18 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on ORD to OMA runs when it is late
The 413 late arrivals split 131 under half an hour, 132 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 150 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early299 flights22.0%
- Within 15 min646 flights47.6%
- 15–29 min late131 flights9.6%
- 30–59 min late132 flights9.7%
- 1–2 hours late92 flights6.8%
- 2+ hours late58 flights4.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,358 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
43 of 351 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 12% of them. In the other direction, 105 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 OMA.
The worst days
Worst days for United on ORD to OMA
The latest arrival of the period was on 27 July 2026, 8 hours 8 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 27 July 2026 | 8 hours 8 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 30 January 2026 | 7 hours 24 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 31 March 2026 | 5 hours 27 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 March 2026 | 5 hours 24 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 July 2026 | 5 hours 1 minute | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 27,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
50% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 to one. The split is drawn from 27,071 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 84.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.52% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
11.0% 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.
At 416 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.6% on time across 1,381 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,379 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 OMA
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 82.8% on time and December 51.3%, a swing of 32 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,358 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to OMA, every carrier
- United on OMA to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to OMA75.7%
- Republic Airways on ORD to OMA72.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to OMA63.7%
- American Airlines on ORD to OMA53.4%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Eppley Airfield (OMA) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- 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.