Route reliability record
ABQ→ORD
Albuquerque to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,176
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,118 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,176 ABQ to ORD flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly ABQ to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.2% of the time and Thursday flights 83.9%, against 78.3% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,145 completed flights
Avg delay
90 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.53%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
79.1% on time across 392 flights
These figures cover 1,176 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ABQ to ORD
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 59 | 88.1% | 55 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 317 | 87.7% | 65 min | 1.58% | A |
| United Airlines | 392 | 79.1% | 96 min | 1.79% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 109 | 72.6% | 56 min | 1.83% | C |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 299 | 67.5% | 108 min | 1.34% | C |
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 23 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am265 flights90.2%
- 8am–11am210 flights86.3%
- 11am–2pm589 flights72.3%
- 2pm–5pm112 flights67.3%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.2% of the time, against 67.3% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 589 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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.
July is the worst month at 67.8% on time, 24 points below October, the best at 91.4%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 123 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 83.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.3%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 22,000 reported delay minutes.
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%National Airspace System
- 30%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
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 90.2% on time here. The split is drawn from 22,319 reported delay minutes.
No single cause dominates. late-arriving aircraft at 33%, national airspace system at 31% and carrier at 30% split the 22,000 reported delay minutes between them. An even spread like this usually means the operation is running close to its designed capacity with no one obvious weak point, and it is the hardest pattern for a traveller to route around.
Cancellations sit at 1.53% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.11%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.8% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,118 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.8% on time across 1,178 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,176 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in ORD after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 91.4% on time and July 67.8%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,145 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ABQ to ORD questions
How often is ABQ to ORD delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.7% of the 1,176 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is ABQ to ORD compared with the rest of the country?
78.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ABQ to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.2% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 67.3%, 23 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 July delays on ABQ to ORD?
July is the weakest month at 67.8% on time, compared with 91.4% in October. Across the year that is 24 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 ABQ — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ABQ to ORD87.7%
- United Airlines on ABQ to ORD79.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on ABQ to ORD72.6%
- American Airlines on ABQ to ORD67.5%
- ABQ to PHX, a related route82.4%
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- ABQ to DEN, a related route82.1%
- Republic Airways on-time record88.1%
- Envoy Air on-time record87.7%
- United Airlines on-time record79.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. ABQ to ORD and ORD to ABQ are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.