UA426

UA426 arrived on time 67.3% of the time, against 77.7% for all DTW → ORD flights, so this departure is 10.4 percentage points worse than the route as a whole. Against United Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 3.6 points worse.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 997 operations, July 2023 – July 2026 · If UA426 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026

Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for UA426 on DTW → ORD. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026

When the aircraft came in 15 or more minutes late, UA426 pushed back an average of 36 minutes late; when it came in on time or early, an average of 1 minute late.

Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into DTW just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 920 of 984 departures in all. A departure is left out when that flight is unknown, was cancelled or diverted, or the aircraft had sat for more than 12 hours. A flight the airline cancelled never left and is not in the count, and one flown by a substitute aircraft is matched to the aircraft that flew it, not to the one first planned.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026

UA426 pushes back an average of 12.2 minutes late and arrives a further 4.5 minutes behind that. This departure loses ground between the two gates rather than recovering it, so a late pushback here tends to get worse on the way, not better. It spends 18.8 minutes on the taxiways at DTW, 1.2 minutes longer than a typical DTW departure in the same hour.

On arrival at ORD, UA426 spends 23.8 min taxiing from touchdown to the gate — ground time a connecting passenger sits through before they can even leave the aircraft, on top of however late the flight itself ran. That is 6.0 minutes longer than a typical ORD arrival (17.8 min).

Departure delay is averaged over every pushback and arrival delay over every completed arrival, so the two counts differ by the flights that never reached ORD. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 9,311 departures from DTW scheduled in the clock hour UA426 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at ORD (952,666 flights), not just UA426’s own. More on taxi time.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026

UA426 is scheduled out of DTW at 9:00 AM, in the 9 AM–10 AM bank. Departures from DTW in that hour arrive on time 84.7% of the time against 79.6% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 5.1 points better before anything about this particular flight is considered.

The two airport figures cover every departure from DTW to every destination, so they describe the slot rather than this journey — the like-for-like comparison against the route is above. Hours are scheduled local, and a number whose schedule moved between banks inside the period has no single hour and is not described here at all. Why the hour matters.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Days with fewer than 120 operations are not scored.

Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route UA426 currently operates. Blending them would produce an average of two different flights.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026

Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. UA426 is placed in the same ordering rather than left out of it; the rows around it are the most punctual departures on the route, not all of them, so this is a comparison and not a rank. Schedules change; confirm the departure still operates before booking around this.

• OO4754 DTW→ORD SkyWest Airlines on the same route, departs 6:00 AM, on time 88.7%
• DL2358 DTW→ORD Delta Air Lines on the same route, departs 3:50 PM, on time 77.4%
• DL1665 DTW→ORD Delta Air Lines on the same route, departs 8:00 PM, on time 71.7%