Route reliability record
BDL→ORD
Hartford to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,375
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 783 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 2,375 BDL to ORD flights, of which American Airlines flew 404 at 79.3% on time.
Best time to fly BDL to ORD: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 78.9%, against 75.9% for the route overall.
American Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 79.3% on time across 404 flights.
Key figures
On time
75.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,297 completed flights
Avg delay
90 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.78%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
79.3% on time across 404 flights
These figures cover 2,375 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.3% 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 BDL to ORD
The three carriers here are closely matched: 6 points 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 404 | 79.3% | 163 min | 2.72% | B |
| Republic Airways | 669 | 76.7% | 78 min | 4.19% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 240 | 76.4% | 47 min | 2.92% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 140 | 75.9% | 65 min | 5.00% | B− |
| United Airlines | 922 | 73.8% | 86 min | 1.41% | C |
Republic Airways cancels 4.2% 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 Hartford 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. 1 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BDL → MDWHartford to Chicago | Southwest Airlines | 77.4% | 78.6% | 1.55% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
| 2. BDL → ORDHartford to Chicago | American Airlines | 77.1% | 79.3% | 2.72% | 5am–8am, Mon | — |
| 3. BDL → ORDHartford to Chicago | Republic Airways | 73.5% | 76.7% | 4.19% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
| 4. BDL → ORDHartford to Chicago | United Airlines | 72.8% | 73.8% | 1.41% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
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 31 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am684 flights87.4%
- 8am–11am149 flights87.7%
- 11am–2pm641 flights83.0%
- 2pm–5pm231 flights57.0%
- 5pm–8pm668 flights61.3%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 87.7% of the time, against 57.0% for the afternoon window. That is 31 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 684 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BDL 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 BDL to ORD, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 87.7% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 57.0%, a wide gap of 30.7 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am87.4%
- 8–11am87.7%
- 11am–2pm83.0%
- 2–5pm57.0%
- 5–8pm61.3%
- 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 20 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 64.2% on time, against 84.1% in May. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 229 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.5%, a spread of 11 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 50,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%National Airspace System
- 25%Carrier
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 2.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 49,754 reported delay minutes.
40% 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 20,000 minutes out of 50,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 2.78%, 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
8.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 783 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 74.5% on time across 2,376 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 2,375 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. May runs 84.1% on time and December 64.2%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,297 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BDL to ORD questions
How often is BDL 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 24.1% of the 2,375 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 BDL to ORD?
American Airlines leads at 79.3% on time across 404 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 73.8%, a gap of 6 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 BDL to ORD?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 87.7% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 57.0%, 31 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 BDL to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 64.2% on time, compared with 84.1% in May. Across the year that is 20 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 BDL — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- American Airlines on BDL to ORD79.3%
- Republic Airways on BDL to ORD76.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on BDL to ORD76.4%
- Envoy Air on BDL to ORD75.9%
- United Airlines on BDL to ORD73.8%
- BDL to ATL, a related route84.2%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- BDL to MCO, a related route73.3%
- American Airlines on-time record79.3%
- Republic Airways on-time record76.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record76.4%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. BDL to ORD and ORD to BDL 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.