Route reliability record
AVL→ORD
Asheville to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,513
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 536 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,513 AVL to ORD flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 790 at 73.7% on time.
Best time to fly AVL to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.1% of the time and Friday flights 76.9%, against 73.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 40 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,459 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.84%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
73.7% on time across 790 flights
These figures cover 1,513 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.6% 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 AVL to ORD
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 790 | 73.7% | 85 min | 2.66% | C |
| Envoy Air | 654 | 72.9% | 68 min | 3.06% | C− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 68 | 71.9% | 84 min | 2.94% | C |
Envoy Air cancels 3.1% 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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Asheville 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. GSP → ORDGreer to Chicago | Envoy Air | 72.7% | 75.4% | 3.60% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. AVL → ORDAsheville to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 71.7% | 73.7% | 2.66% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
| 3. AVL → ORDAsheville to Chicago | Envoy Air | 70.7% | 72.9% | 3.06% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 4. GSP → ORDGreer to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 68.6% | 71.4% | 3.97% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
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 32 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am356 flights86.1%
- 8am–11am188 flights82.3%
- 11am–2pm395 flights80.5%
- 2pm–5pm105 flights70.1%
- 5pm–8pm453 flights54.0%
- 8pm–5am16 flights—
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 54.0% on time, against 86.1% 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 453 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter AVL 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 AVL to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 86.1% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 54.0%, a wide gap of 32.1 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am86.1%
- 8–11am82.3%
- 11am–2pm80.5%
- 2–5pm70.1%
- 5–8pm54.0%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 33 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 51.1% on time, against 84.6% in February. 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 194 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 76.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.8%, a spread of 8 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 30,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%National Airspace System
- 26%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 30,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 30,258 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 86.1% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.84%, 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.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
11.6% 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.
The 536 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.
The return leg runs 74.6% on time across 1,514 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 1,513 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 2.84% 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. 1,459 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
AVL to ORD questions
How often is AVL to ORD delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 26.7% of the 1,513 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 AVL to ORD?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 73.7% on time across 790 flights. Envoy Air is at the other end on 72.9%, a gap of about a point. 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 AVL to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 54.0%, 32 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 AVL to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 51.1% on time, compared with 84.6% in February. Across the year that is 33 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 AVL — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on AVL to ORD73.7%
- Envoy Air on AVL to ORD72.9%
- AVL to ATL, a related route86.3%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- AVL to CLT, a related route83.8%
- PSA Airlines on-time record100.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record73.7%
- Envoy Air on-time record72.9%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. AVL to ORD and ORD to AVL 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.