Carrier route record

UARIC→ORD

United Airlines · Richmond to Chicago

Flights: 295
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 13%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.

United on RIC to ORD earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 295 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 818 at 82.4% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, United's RIC to ORD record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 71 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 288 completed flights

Avg delay

58 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.03%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

77.1%

Every carrier on RIC to ORD, 2,211 flights

These figures cover 295 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

United against every carrier on RIC to ORD

United flew 295 of the 2,211 flights on RIC to ORD, about 13% of it. Its 84.7% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.7% to SkyWest at 66.1%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 82.4% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 66.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 719 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on RIC to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines (this page)thin sample	295	84.7%	58 min	2.03%	B
Republic Airways	818	82.4%	88 min	3.67%	B−
Envoy Air	379	80.1%	69 min	3.17%	B−
SkyWest Airlines	719	66.1%	115 min	4.59%	C−

SkyWest Airlines cancels 4.6% 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 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 295 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split United's RIC to ORD record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 84.7% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

United on RIC to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 202591 flights89.9%
Oct–Dec 202582 flights85.2%
Jan–Mar 202632 flights77.4%
Apr–Jun 202690 flights81.6%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 84.7% on time across 295 flights.

United on RIC to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 89.9% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 77.4%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 74 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 90.5% on time and Saturday the weakest at 72.5%. 18 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. National Airspace System accounts for 46% of the 2,545 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.

National Airspace System
46%
Carrier
37%
Late-arriving aircraft
17%

The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 939 of the 2,545 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,545 reported delay minutes.

46% 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 1,175 minutes out of 2,545, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations sit at 2.03% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.34%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

The 642 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 58.7% on time across 295 flights, 26 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 26 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 295 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 RIC to ORD

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 295 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 84.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 288 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures