UA561

UA561 arrived on time 81.2% of the time, against 74.3% for all ORD → MCI flights, so this departure is 6.9 percentage points better than the route as a whole. Against United Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 5.9 points better.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 688 operations, May 2024 – July 2026 · If UA561 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 · May 2024 – July 2026

Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for UA561 on ORD → MCI. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering May 2024 – July 2026

The aircraft flying UA561 came in 15 or more minutes late on 10% of the departures where its previous flight is known. There are not enough departures in both groups to say how the flight left after a late one and after an on-time one.

Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into ORD just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 619 of 683 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 May 2024 – July 2026

UA561 pushes back an average of 10.6 minutes late and reaches the gate at MCI an average of 4.6 minutes late. The 6.0 minutes between those two figures are slack the published schedule already carries, which is why a late pushback on this flight does not reliably become a late arrival. It spends 21.4 minutes on the taxiways at ORD, 1.5 minutes shorter than a typical ORD departure in the same hour.

On arrival at MCI, UA561 spends 7.2 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 1.2 minutes longer than a typical MCI arrival (6.0 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 MCI. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 45,349 departures from ORD scheduled in the clock hour UA561 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at MCI (152,684 flights), not just UA561’s own. More on taxi time.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · May 2024 – July 2026

UA561 is scheduled out of ORD at 12:45 PM, in the 12 PM–1 PM bank. Departures from ORD in that hour arrive on time 77.2% of the time against 74.5% across the airport’s whole day, so the hour UA561 leaves in is an ordinary one for ORD and explains nothing about its record either way.

The two airport figures cover every departure from ORD 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 · May 2024 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.

Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route UA561 currently operates. Blending them would produce an average of two different flights.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering May 2024 – July 2026

• UA303 MCI→ORD Return trip, MCI to ORD, departs 8:00 AM, on time 81.2%
• UA708 MCI→DEN United Airlines flight out of MCI, MCI to DEN, departs 1:50 PM, on time 88.5%
• UA695 ORD→SJU United Airlines flight out of ORD, ORD to SJU, departs 2:20 PM, on time 78.0%