Route reliability record
ASE→ORD
Aspen to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,071
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,013 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 6.4% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, a little over half of flights arrive on time, worth a D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,071 ASE to ORD flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
Best time to fly ASE to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 77.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 72.8%, against 62.1% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 15 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 155 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 988 completed flights
Avg delay
99 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.44%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
62.1% on time across 1,071 flights
These figures cover 1,071 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 20.3% 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 ASE 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,071 | 62.1% | 99 min | 6.44% | D− |
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 28 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–8am60 flights77.6%
- 8am–11am290 flights68.1%
- 11am–2pm527 flights61.2%
- 2pm–5pm194 flights50.0%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 40% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 77.6% of the time, against 50.0% for the afternoon window. That is 28 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 527 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 32 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 43.4% on time, 32 points below September, the best at 75.6%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 204 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 72.8% on time and Saturday the weakest at 52.0%. 21 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 37,000 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Extreme weather
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 21%Carrier
Extreme weather accounts for 34% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 5.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 36,919 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 6.44%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in fifteen 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 20.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,013 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 60.6% on time across 1,072 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,071 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in ORD after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.44% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 988 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ASE to ORD questions
How often is ASE to 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 37.9% of the 1,071 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is ASE to ORD compared with the rest of the country?
62.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 15 points against it. That is worth a D− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ASE to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 77.6% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 50.0%, 28 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 ASE to ORD?
July is the weakest month at 43.4% on time, compared with 75.6% in September. Across the year that is 32 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 ASE — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- ASE to DEN, a related route75.2%
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- ASE to LAX, a related route73.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record62.1%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. ASE to ORD and ORD to ASE 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.