Carrier route record
UATVC→ORD
United Airlines · Traverse City to Chicago
- Flights
- 457
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 17%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on TVC to ORD sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 457 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 478 at 80.9% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 80.9% on time across 478 flights.
Key figures
On time
74.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 442 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.06%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.2%
Every carrier on TVC to ORD, 2,616 flights
These figures cover 457 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on TVC to ORD
United flew 457 of the 2,616 flights on TVC to ORD, about 17% of it. Its 74.0% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 69.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 81.4% to PSA at 61.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 80.9% of the time; PSA Airlines manages 61.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 377 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 188 | 81.4% | 79 min | 2.66% | B |
| Republic Airways | 478 | 80.9% | 84 min | 3.35% | B− |
| United Airlines (this page) | 457 | 74.0% | 67 min | 3.06% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,116 | 62.3% | 121 min | 5.47% | D− |
| PSA Airlines | 377 | 61.7% | 109 min | 11.41% | D− |
PSA Airlines cancels 11.4% 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.
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 19 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am354 flights78.7%
- 8am–11am10 flights—
- 11am–2pm7 flights—
- 2pm–5pm86 flights55.4%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 78.7% of the time, against 55.4% for the afternoon window. That is 23 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 354 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on TVC to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 56.7% on time, against 83.9% in May. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 83.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.7%. 16 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 7,643 reported delay minutes.
- 39%National Airspace System
- 39%Carrier
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, 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 2,962 of the 7,643 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 7,643 reported delay minutes.
39% 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 2,981 minutes out of 7,643, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.06%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.8% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 224 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 62.8% on time across 457 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 457 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 TVC to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.06% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 442 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TVC to ORD, every carrier
- United on ORD to TVC, the return leg
- Envoy Air on TVC to ORD81.4%
- Republic Airways on TVC to ORD80.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on TVC to ORD62.3%
- PSA Airlines on TVC to ORD61.7%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.