Carrier route record
UAORD→TVC
United Airlines · Chicago to Traverse City
- Flights
- 457
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 17%
- 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 TVC draws a D. Roughly 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 457 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 479 at 71.1% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 71.1% on time across 479 flights.
Key figures
On time
62.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 446 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.41%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
66.8%
Every carrier on ORD to TVC, 2,617 flights
These figures cover 457 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.2% 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 TVC
United flew 457 of the 2,617 flights on ORD to TVC, about 17% of it. Its 62.8% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 66.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 80.5% to United at 62.8%. 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 71.1% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 64.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,115 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 189 | 80.5% | 60 min | 2.12% | B |
| Republic Airways | 479 | 71.1% | 77 min | 4.38% | C− |
| PSA Airlines | 377 | 67.6% | 103 min | 8.22% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,115 | 64.0% | 107 min | 5.29% | D− |
| United Airlines (this page) | 457 | 62.8% | 79 min | 2.41% | D |
PSA Airlines cancels 8.2% 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.
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 14 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am1 flights—
- 11am–2pm87 flights73.3%
- 2pm–5pm12 flights—
- 5pm–8pm26 flights—
- 8pm–5am331 flights59.2%
Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 59.2% on time, against 73.3% 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 331 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on ORD to TVC through the year
July is the worst month at 45.2% on time, 35 points below October, the best at 80.6%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 70.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 51.6%. 19 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 53% of the 13,000 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
53% 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 13,000 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 13,138 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.41% 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. 13.2% 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 224 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 74.0% on time across 457 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 457 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 TVC
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 457 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 62.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 446 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to TVC, every carrier
- United on TVC to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to TVC80.5%
- Republic Airways on ORD to TVC71.1%
- PSA Airlines on ORD to TVC67.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to TVC64.0%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.