Carrier route record
UASAT→ORD
United Airlines · San Antonio to Chicago
- Flights
- 833
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 42%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on SAT to ORD lands a B, 3 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 an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 833 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate United on SAT to ORD from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 814 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.20%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.3%
Every carrier on SAT to ORD, 1,968 flights
These figures cover 833 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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 SAT to ORD
United flew 833 of the 1,968 flights on SAT to ORD, about 42% of it. Its 80.1% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 80.1% to SkyWest at 65.9%. Three 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 833 | 80.1% | 87 min | 1.20% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 352 | 76.6% | 67 min | 2.84% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 101 | 74.7% | 54 min | 4.95% | C− |
| American Airlines | 550 | 73.1% | 74 min | 2.55% | C |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 132 | 65.9% | 61 min | 4.55% | C− |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on SAT to ORD
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 23 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–8am351 flights86.8%
- 8am–11am13 flights—
- 11am–2pm151 flights81.0%
- 2pm–5pm206 flights77.5%
- 5pm–8pm112 flights64.0%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.0% on time, against 86.8% 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 351 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on SAT to ORD through the year
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 65.1%. February is the strongest month at 89.3%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 24 points. April was the busiest month here, with 86 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 75.8%. 8 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 14,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%National Airspace System
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
37% 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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 29 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 14,021 reported delay minutes.
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 5,258 minutes out of 14,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.20% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.08%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.2% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,041 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 75.6% on time across 833 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 833 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 SAT to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 833 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 80.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 814 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SAT to ORD, every carrier
- United on ORD to SAT, the return leg
- Envoy Air on SAT to ORD76.6%
- Republic Airways on SAT to ORD74.7%
- American Airlines on SAT to ORD73.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on SAT to ORD65.9%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- San Antonio International (SAT) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- 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.