Carrier route record

UATUL→ORD

United Airlines · Tulsa to Chicago

Flights: 108
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 5%
Carriers: 5

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

United on TUL 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 108 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 993 at 80.2% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, United's TUL to ORD record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 68 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 107 completed flights

Avg delay

82 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.93%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

78.1%

Every carrier on TUL to ORD, 2,142 flights

These figures cover 108 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 2 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.

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Carrier by carrier

United against every carrier on TUL to ORD

United flew 108 of the 2,142 flights on TUL to ORD, about 5% of it. Its 84.1% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.1% to PSA at 55.1%. Two 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.

On-time performance by carrier on TUL to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines (this page)thin sample	108	84.1%	82 min	0.93%	B+
Republic Airwaysthin sample	63	81.0%	61 min	7.94%	B−
SkyWest Airlines	993	80.2%	100 min	1.71%	B
Envoy Air	887	77.3%	75 min	3.38%	B−
PSA Airlinesthin sample	91	55.1%	114 min	2.20%	D

Envoy Air cancels 3.4% 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.

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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 108 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split United's TUL to ORD record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 84.1% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

United on TUL to ORD through the year

Oct–Dec 20251 flights—
Jan–Mar 20261 flights—
Apr–Jun 202644 flights84.1%
Jul–Sep 202662 flights83.6%

Scale runs 75% to 90%. 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 84.1% on time across 108 flights.

Split by quarter, United on TUL to ORD logged 1 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 1 flights in Jan–Mar 2026, 44 flights in Apr–Jun 2026 and 62 flights in Jul–Sep 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 84.1% annual figure is the one to use.

Arrival by arrival

How late United on TUL to ORD runs when it is late

The 17 late arrivals split 6 under half an hour, 3 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 8 an hour or more.

15+ min early25 flights23.4%
Within 15 min65 flights60.7%
15–29 min late6 flights5.6%
30–59 min late3 flights2.8%
1–2 hours late3 flights2.8%
2+ hours late5 flights4.7%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 107 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

Only 13 of 107 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.

The worst days

Worst days for United on TUL to ORD

The latest arrival of the period was on 24 May 2026, 4 hours 4 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).

The latest arrivals of United on TUL to ORD in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
24 May 2026	4 hours 4 minutes	National Airspace System
5 June 2026	3 hours 28 minutes	Carrier
30 August 2026	3 hours 4 minutes	National Airspace System
14 August 2026	2 hours 28 minutes	Carrier
27 June 2026	2 hours 5 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why United runs late on this route

National Airspace System accounts for 51% of the 1,398 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

National Airspace System
51%
Carrier
49%

The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 685 of the 1,398 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,398 reported delay minutes.

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 713 minutes out of 1,398, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations sit at 0.93% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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 585 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.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 50.0% on time across 111 flights, 34 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 34 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 108 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 TUL to ORD

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 108 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 84.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 107 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures