Route reliability record
BDL→ORD
Hartford to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,349
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 783 mi
- Carriers
- 5
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 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 2,349 flights, of which Republic Airways flew 644 at 78.2% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 78.2% on time across 644 flights.
Key figures
On time
74.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,278 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.64%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Republic
78.2% on time across 644 flights
These figures cover 2,349 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.1% 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 BDL to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 78.2% of the time; United Airlines manages 71.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 841 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 141 | 78.3% | 60 min | 2.13% | B |
| Republic Airways | 644 | 78.2% | 69 min | 3.88% | B− |
| American Airlines | 461 | 73.2% | 154 min | 3.25% | C− |
| United Airlines | 841 | 71.5% | 78 min | 1.55% | C |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 262 | 70.6% | 71 min | 2.29% | C |
Republic Airways cancels 3.9% 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.
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 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am684 flights87.5%
- 8am–11am87 flights85.9%
- 11am–2pm642 flights83.3%
- 2pm–5pm210 flights58.4%
- 5pm–8pm724 flights56.0%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.0% on time, against 87.5% 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 724 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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 62.1% on time, 22 points below May, the best at 84.1%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 229 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.4%. 12 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 53,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%National Airspace System
- 30%Carrier
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
38% 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 53,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 52,973 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 2.64%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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. 9.1% 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 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. 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 75.4% on time across 2,350 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 2,349 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.
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 July 62.1%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,278 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 arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 26.0% of the 2,349 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on BDL to ORD?
Republic Airways leads at 78.2% on time across 644 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 71.5%, a gap of 7 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 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 56.0%, 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 July delays on BDL to ORD?
July is the weakest month at 62.1% on time, compared with 84.1% in May. Across the year that is 22 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
- Envoy Air on-time record78.3%
- Republic Airways on-time record78.2%
- American Airlines on-time record73.2%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.