Route reliability record
ATW→ORD
Appleton to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,434
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 160 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.6% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 2,434 ATW to ORD flights, of which Envoy Air flew 1,185 at 77.4% on time.
Best time to fly ATW to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.5% of the time and Saturday flights 74.8%, against 70.9% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 64 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,320 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.56%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
77.4% on time across 1,185 flights
These figures cover 2,434 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ATW to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 77.4% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 64.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,249 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,185 | 77.4% | 74 min | 3.54% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,249 | 64.7% | 96 min | 5.52% | D− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.5% 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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Appleton to Chicago
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 2 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ATW → ORDAppleton to Chicago | Envoy Air | 74.7% | 77.4% | 3.54% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 2. GRB → ORDGreen Bay to Chicago | Envoy Air | 74.4% | 77.2% | 3.67% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 3. GRB → ORDGreen Bay to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 62.0% | 65.4% | 5.20% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 4. ATW → ORDAppleton to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 61.1% | 64.7% | 5.52% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 27 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am636 flights83.5%
- 8am–11am416 flights74.6%
- 11am–2pm416 flights70.7%
- 2pm–5pm282 flights69.5%
- 5pm–8pm659 flights57.0%
- 8pm–5am25 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.0% on time, against 83.5% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 659 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ATW to ORD 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 ATW to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 83.5% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 57.0%, a wide gap of 26.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am83.5%
- 8–11am74.6%
- 11am–2pm70.7%
- 2–5pm69.5%
- 5–8pm57.0%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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 60.3% on time, against 81.0% in June. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 332 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 74.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 67.4%, a spread of 7 points.
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 59,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 27%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 59,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 59,000 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 83.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.56%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty 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
13.9% 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.
At 160 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 70.1% on time across 2,436 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 2,434 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 delay figures matter less here than the 4.56% 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. 2,320 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ATW to ORD questions
How often is ATW 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 29.1% of the 2,434 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ATW to ORD?
Envoy Air leads at 77.4% on time across 1,185 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 64.7%, a gap of 13 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 ATW to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 83.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 57.0%, 27 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 ATW to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 60.3% on time, compared with 81.0% in June. Across the year that is 21 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 ATW — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ATW to ORD77.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on ATW to ORD64.7%
- ATW to DTW, a related route78.6%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- ATW to MSP, a related route74.4%
- Envoy Air on-time record77.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record64.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ATW to ORD and ORD to ATW are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed ATW to ORD’s on-time badge on your site
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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.