Carrier route record
UAORD→SRQ
United Airlines · Chicago to Sarasota
- Flights
- 617
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 62%
- 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 SRQ lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 617 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate United on ORD to SRQ from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 611 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.65%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.4%
Every carrier on ORD to SRQ, 998 flights
These figures cover 617 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% 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 SRQ
United flew 617 of the 998 flights on ORD to SRQ, most of the route. Its 79.4% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 83.5% to SkyWest at 50.0%. Four of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 121 | 83.5% | 61 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 617 | 79.4% | 70 min | 0.65% | B+ |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 216 | 70.7% | 75 min | 3.70% | C− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 42 | 66.7% | 91 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 50.0% | 198 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 617 flights.
- 5am–8am86 flights83.3%
- 8am–11am4 flights—
- 11am–2pm375 flights79.6%
- 2pm–5pm150 flights78.4%
- 5pm–8pm1 flights—
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 83.3% on time for the 5am–8am window against 78.4% for 2pm–5pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 375 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on ORD to SRQ through the year
December is the weak month at 66.2% on time, against 91.5% 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. March was the busiest month here, with 90 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.9%. 16 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 8,875 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%National Airspace System
- 26%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
41% 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 8,875 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 8,875 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 83.3% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.65%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,050 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.3% on time across 617 flights, 8 points below 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. 617 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 SRQ
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 617 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 79.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 611 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to SRQ, every carrier
- United on SRQ to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to SRQ83.5%
- American Airlines on ORD to SRQ70.7%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
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.