Route reliability record
ALB→ORD
Albany to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,303
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 723 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrive 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 2,303 flights, of which Envoy Air flew 756 at 81.1% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 81.1% on time across 756 flights.
Key figures
On time
76.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,235 completed flights
Avg delay
84 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.65%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
81.1% on time across 756 flights
These figures cover 2,303 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 ALB to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 81.1% of the time; Republic Airways manages 71.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 587 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 756 | 81.1% | 83 min | 2.12% | B |
| United Airlines | 756 | 76.4% | 95 min | 1.85% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 204 | 73.9% | 82 min | 2.45% | C |
| Republic Airways | 587 | 71.8% | 75 min | 4.43% | C− |
Republic Airways cancels 4.4% 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
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 25 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am706 flights86.4%
- 8am–11am150 flights85.1%
- 11am–2pm540 flights83.4%
- 2pm–5pm341 flights61.2%
- 5pm–8pm525 flights63.6%
- 8pm–5am41 flights73.0%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 86.4% of the time, against 61.2% for the afternoon window. That is 25 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 706 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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 63.4% on time, 26 points below May, the best at 89.0%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 261 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.1%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 42% of the 44,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 42%National Airspace System
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% 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 19,000 minutes out of 44,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 44,095 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 2.65%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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.
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 are the an hour and a half kind, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 723 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 runs 75.7% on time across 2,304 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 2,303 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.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 89.0% on time and July 63.4%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,235 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ALB to ORD questions
How often is ALB to ORD delayed?
About one flight in four arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 23.4% of the 2,303 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ALB to ORD?
Envoy Air leads at 81.1% on time across 756 flights. Republic Airways is at the other end on 71.8%, a gap of 9 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 ALB to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.4% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 61.2%, 25 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 ALB to ORD?
July is the weakest month at 63.4% on time, compared with 89.0% in May. Across the year that is 26 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 ALB — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on-time record81.1%
- United Airlines on-time record76.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record73.9%
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. ALB to ORD and ORD to ALB are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.