Carrier route record
UAROC→ORD
United Airlines · Rochester to Chicago
- Flights
- 591
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 25%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on ROC 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 591 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 711 at 81.1% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so United on ROC to ORD runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 100 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 583 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.35%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.7%
Every carrier on ROC to ORD, 2,340 flights
These figures cover 591 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.7% 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 ROC to ORD
United flew 591 of the 2,340 flights on ROC to ORD, about 25% of it. Its 67.6% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 81.1% to SkyWest at 62.4%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 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 | 711 | 81.1% | 86 min | 2.39% | B |
| Envoy Air | 813 | 77.8% | 87 min | 2.21% | B |
| United Airlines (this page) | 591 | 67.6% | 85 min | 1.35% | C |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 225 | 62.4% | 133 min | 3.11% | D− |
No carrier stands out. Republic tops the table at 81.1%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 36 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am343 flights80.8%
- 8am–11am20 flights—
- 11am–2pm4 flights—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm222 flights45.2%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 35% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 45.2% on time, against 80.8% for the 5am–8am 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 343 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on ROC to ORD through the year
January is the weak month at 55.9% on time, against 91.2% in April. 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 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.2%. 13 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 51% of the 16,000 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.
- 51%National Airspace System
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
51% 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 8,105 minutes out of 16,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 15,968 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.35% 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. 12.7% 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 528 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 63.2% on time across 587 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 591 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 ROC to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 591 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 67.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 583 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ROC to ORD, every carrier
- United on ORD to ROC, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ROC to ORD81.1%
- Envoy Air on ROC to ORD77.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on ROC to ORD62.4%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- 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.