Chicago, IL · departure reliability
ORD
Chicago O'Hare International
- Departures
- 363,008
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Carriers
- 12
- US rank
- #1 by volume
Chicago
Chicago O'Hare International sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 363,008 flights, of which Envoy Air flew 57,966 at 76.1% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the twelve carriers covered here at 76.1% on time across 57,966 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.8%
Departures arriving under 15 minutes late at their destination
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed flights only
Cancelled
2.80%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
76.1% on time here
These figures cover 363,000 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Carrier by carrier
Which airlines run best out of ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 76.1% of the time; PSA Airlines manages 60.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,832 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 102,132 | 73.0% | 73 min | 1.30% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 78,955 | 65.8% | 88 min | 4.06% | C− |
| American Airlines | 61,506 | 66.4% | 82 min | 2.56% | C |
| Envoy Air | 57,966 | 76.1% | 65 min | 2.93% | B |
| Republic Airways | 33,415 | 76.1% | 74 min | 3.81% | B− |
| Delta Air Lines | 10,687 | 72.0% | 91 min | 3.13% | C− |
| Frontier Airlines | 4,179 | 67.7% | 109 min | 3.76% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines | 3,558 | 63.4% | 83 min | 5.99% | D− |
| Alaska Airlines | 3,346 | 67.4% | 70 min | 1.82% | C |
| Southwest Airlines | 3,139 | 71.3% | 70 min | 1.40% | C |
| PSA Airlines | 2,832 | 60.2% | 127 min | 7.06% | D− |
| JetBlue Airways | 1,293 | 73.1% | 99 min | 6.34% | C− |
PSA Airlines cancels 7.1% 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.
Route by route
Busiest routes out of ORD
Route-level records vary far more than the airport average. These are the 25 busiest departures from ORD, each with its own on-time rate against the airport-wide 70.8%.
| Route | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ORD to LGA · New York | 11,630 | 66.6% | 84 min | 5.29% | C− |
| ORD to BOS · Boston | 7,864 | 66.6% | 81 min | 2.99% | C |
| ORD to LAX · Los Angeles | 7,121 | 72.0% | 75 min | 1.33% | C |
| ORD to DFW · Dallas-Fort Worth | 7,111 | 70.4% | 84 min | 2.69% | C |
| ORD to DCA · Washington | 7,104 | 69.0% | 80 min | 3.04% | C− |
| ORD to ATL · Atlanta | 6,495 | 74.1% | 81 min | 2.31% | C |
| ORD to MSP · Minneapolis | 6,395 | 69.9% | 80 min | 2.67% | C |
| ORD to MCO · Orlando | 6,220 | 72.8% | 75 min | 1.61% | C |
| ORD to IAH · Houston | 6,141 | 76.0% | 74 min | 1.40% | B |
| ORD to EWR · Newark | 6,126 | 69.8% | 87 min | 3.82% | C− |
| ORD to DEN · Denver | 6,118 | 74.3% | 78 min | 1.19% | C |
| ORD to DTW · Detroit | 6,013 | 71.1% | 85 min | 3.21% | C− |
| ORD to SFO · San Francisco | 5,649 | 66.2% | 74 min | 1.08% | C |
| ORD to PHX · Phoenix | 5,631 | 72.4% | 82 min | 1.63% | C |
| ORD to SEA · Seattle | 5,542 | 67.5% | 66 min | 1.37% | C |
| ORD to MKE · Milwaukee | 5,344 | 64.3% | 92 min | 4.68% | D− |
| ORD to IND · Indianapolis | 5,279 | 74.1% | 76 min | 3.88% | C− |
| ORD to LAS · Las Vegas | 5,154 | 72.9% | 75 min | 1.34% | C |
| ORD to PHL · Philadelphia | 5,082 | 70.8% | 92 min | 3.38% | C− |
| ORD to BNA · Nashville | 5,044 | 69.2% | 81 min | 2.54% | C |
| ORD to CMH · Columbus | 4,990 | 73.5% | 75 min | 2.77% | C |
| ORD to CLE · Cleveland | 4,893 | 70.8% | 78 min | 2.82% | C |
| ORD to CVG · Cincinnati | 4,690 | 72.1% | 77 min | 3.26% | C− |
| ORD to CLT · Charlotte | 4,494 | 73.7% | 81 min | 2.31% | C |
| ORD to MIA · Miami | 4,465 | 73.3% | 74 min | 1.90% | C |
Departure window
The best time of day to leave ORD
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 24 points, against 16 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am39,579 flights84.7%
- 8am–11am78,769 flights77.2%
- 11am–2pm58,032 flights73.6%
- 2pm–5pm69,479 flights67.4%
- 5pm–8pm62,566 flights61.1%
- 8pm–5am54,583 flights63.2%
Scale runs 55% to 90%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 61.1% on time, against 84.7% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 78,769 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD departures by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On departures from Chicago (ORD), the best departure window is 5am–8am at 84.7% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 61.1%, a wide gap of 23.6 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am84.7%
- 8–11am77.2%
- 11am–2pm73.6%
- 2–5pm67.4%
- 5–8pm61.1%
- 8pm–5am63.2%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When ORD runs late
ORD's year swings by 18 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 61.0% on time, against 79.2% in September. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 33,733 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 75.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.8%, a spread of 9 points.
ORD month by month
From Europe
Transatlantic routes into ORD
23 European airports send scheduled passenger flights to ORD, 27,772 flights a year in both directions by the DOT's international count. The DOT keeps no delay record for international flights; the UK routes carry the CAA's departure punctuality, and every route sets its departure airport's EUROCONTROL figures beside ORD's own record above.
- LHR to ORD · London5,762 flights
- FRA to ORD · Frankfurt2,780 flights
- DUB to ORD · Dublin2,325 flights
- CDG to ORD · Paris2,073 flights
- ZRH to ORD · Zurich1,694 flights
- MUC to ORD · Munich1,689 flights
- AMS to ORD · Amsterdam1,326 flights
- KEF to ORD · Reykjavík1,276 flights
- FCO to ORD · Rome1,151 flights
- MAD to ORD · Madrid1,147 flights
- BCN to ORD · Barcelona884 flights
- WAW to ORD · Warsaw858 flights
Delay causes
Why ORD gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 42% of the 8.13 million delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8.13 million reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. The split is drawn from 8,133,225 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 84.7% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.80%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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.
12.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
363,008 flights sit behind these numbers, which is a large enough sample that the headline rate is not moving on noise. Where a sub-group falls below 30 flights the site shows a dash instead of a percentage.
What to do with this
Flying out of ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.80% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over 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. 351,763 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD delay questions
How often is Chicago (ORD) delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 29.2% of the 363,008 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on Chicago (ORD)?
Envoy Air leads at 76.1% on time across 57,966 flights. PSA Airlines is at the other end on 60.2%, a gap of 16 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on Chicago (ORD)?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 84.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 61.1%, 24 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are December delays on Chicago (ORD)?
December is the weakest month at 61.0% on time, compared with 79.2% in September. Across the year that is 18 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to LGA — New York66.6%
- ORD to BOS — Boston66.6%
- ORD to LAX — Los Angeles72.0%
- ORD to DFW — Dallas-Fort Worth70.4%
- ORD to DCA — Washington69.0%
- ORD to ATL — Atlanta74.1%
- United Airlines on-time record73.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record65.8%
- American Airlines on-time record66.4%
- Envoy Air on-time record76.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- US airports with the biggest gap between their best and worst month
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.