Carrier route record
UAPBI→ORD
United Airlines · West Palm Beach to Chicago
- Flights
- 501
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 39%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on PBI to ORD draws a C+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 501 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so United on PBI to ORD runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 111 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 493 completed flights
Avg delay
90 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.80%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.0%
Every carrier on PBI to ORD, 1,297 flights
These figures cover 501 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.0% 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 PBI to ORD
United flew 501 of the 1,297 flights on PBI to ORD, about 39% of it. Its 66.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 67.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 67.3% to United at 66.5%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 796 | 67.3% | 106 min | 2.64% | C |
| United Airlines (this page) | 501 | 66.5% | 90 min | 0.80% | C+ |
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 29 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am98 flights84.5%
- 11am–2pm104 flights82.5%
- 2pm–5pm267 flights55.7%
- 5pm–8pm31 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 84.5% of the time, against 55.7% for the afternoon window. That is 29 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 267 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on PBI to ORD through the year
May is the best month on the calendar at 75.6% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 90 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 77.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 57.7%. 20 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 15,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%National Airspace System
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
38% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 5,601 minutes out of 15,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 14,877 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 84.5% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.80%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.0% 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.
The 1,144 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 73.5% on time across 502 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 501 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 PBI to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 501 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 66.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 493 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PBI to ORD, every carrier
- United on ORD to PBI, the return leg
- American Airlines on PBI to ORD67.3%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- 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.