Route reliability record
AVL→ORD
Asheville to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,398
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 536 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,398 AVL to ORD flights, of which Envoy Air flew 620 at 72.3% on time.
Best time to fly AVL to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.8% of the time and Friday flights 75.0%, against 71.9% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 57 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,350 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.79%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
72.3% on time across 620 flights
These figures cover 1,398 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.0% 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 AVL to ORD
The two carriers here are closely matched: half 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+ |
| Envoy Air | 620 | 72.3% | 65 min | 2.90% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 739 | 71.6% | 82 min | 2.57% | C |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 38 | 68.6% | 94 min | 5.26% | C− |
No carrier stands out. Envoy tops the table at 72.3%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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. AVL → ORDAsheville to Chicago | Envoy Air | 70.2% | 72.3% | 2.90% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. GSP → ORDGreer to Chicago | Envoy Air | 70.0% | 72.5% | 3.48% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. AVL → ORDAsheville to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 69.8% | 71.6% | 2.57% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
| 4. GSP → ORDGreer to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 67.1% | 70.4% | 4.74% | 5am–8am, Mon | — |
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 34 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–8am329 flights85.8%
- 8am–11am122 flights81.2%
- 11am–2pm398 flights80.3%
- 2pm–5pm105 flights70.1%
- 5pm–8pm428 flights51.4%
- 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: 51.4% on time, against 85.8% 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 428 flights scheduled in it.
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 75.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.0%. 9 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 28,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
- 8%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 28,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 28,440 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 85.8% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.79%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.0% 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 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. 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 75.1% on time across 1,400 flights, 3 points above 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,398 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. February runs 84.6% on time and December 51.1%, a swing of 33 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,350 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
AVL to ORD questions
How often is AVL to ORD delayed?
Roughly 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 28.1% of the 1,398 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on AVL to ORD?
Envoy Air leads at 72.3% on time across 620 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 71.6%, a gap of half 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 85.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 51.4%, 34 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
- Envoy Air on AVL to ORD72.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on AVL to ORD71.6%
- AVL to ATL, a related route85.8%
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- AVL to CLT, a related route83.0%
- PSA Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record72.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record71.6%
- 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.
Embed AVL to ORD’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.