Carrier route record
UAORD→ORF
United Airlines · Chicago to Norfolk
- Flights
- 590
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 30%
- 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 ORF 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 590 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 447 at 81.4% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so United on ORD to ORF runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 112 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 581 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.53%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
71.8%
Every carrier on ORD to ORF, 1,957 flights
These figures cover 590 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on ORD to ORF
United flew 590 of the 1,957 flights on ORD to ORF, about 30% of it. Its 66.1% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 81.4% to PSA at 52.4%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 447 | 81.4% | 75 min | 1.12% | B |
| Envoy Air | 443 | 79.8% | 61 min | 2.26% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 280 | 68.2% | 52 min | 2.14% | C |
| United Airlines (this page) | 590 | 66.1% | 70 min | 1.53% | C |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 11 | 54.5% | 61 min | 0.00% | F+ |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 186 | 52.4% | 89 min | 10.75% | F− |
No carrier stands out. Republic tops the table at 81.4%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on ORD to ORF
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 11 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am19 flights—
- 8am–11am1 flights—
- 11am–2pm258 flights71.9%
- 2pm–5pm7 flights—
- 5pm–8pm293 flights61.3%
- 8pm–5am12 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 61.3% on time, against 71.9% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 293 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on ORD to ORF through the year
February is the weak month at 56.4% on time, against 77.4% 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. May was the busiest month here, with 74 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 76.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 55.4%, a spread of 21 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on ORD to ORF runs when it is late
The 197 late arrivals split 56 under half an hour, 66 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 75 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early95 flights16.4%
- Within 15 min289 flights49.7%
- 15–29 min late56 flights9.6%
- 30–59 min late66 flights11.4%
- 1–2 hours late45 flights7.7%
- 2+ hours late30 flights5.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 581 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
24 of 171 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. In the other direction, 50 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 ORF.
The worst days
Worst days for United on ORD to ORF
The latest arrival of the period was on 29 November 2025, 6 hours 20 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 29 November 2025 | 6 hours 20 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 24 April 2026 | 5 hours 37 minutes | Carrier |
| 24 June 2026 | 5 hours 28 minutes | Carrier |
| 4 May 2026 | 4 hours 50 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 8 February 2026 | 4 hours 40 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 14,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
45% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 13,731 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.53% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
12.9% 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.
The 717 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.5% on time across 592 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 590 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 ORF
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 590 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 66.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 581 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to ORF, every carrier
- United on ORF to ORD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORD to ORF81.4%
- Envoy Air on ORD to ORF79.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to ORF68.2%
- PSA Airlines on ORD to ORF52.4%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.