Route reliability record
BTV→ORD
Burlington to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,245
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 763 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,245 BTV to ORD flights, of which United Airlines flew 683 at 69.0% on time.
Best time to fly BTV to ORD: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 70.7%, against 66.2% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 114 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,221 completed flights
Avg delay
97 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.93%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
69.0% on time across 683 flights
These figures cover 1,245 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.9% 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 BTV to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 69.0% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 61.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 481 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 18 | 75.0% | 52 min | 11.11% | B− |
| United Airlines | 683 | 69.0% | 87 min | 0.73% | C+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 63 | 65.1% | 64 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 481 | 61.9% | 113 min | 3.53% | D− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 3.5% 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Burlington to Chicago
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BTV → ORDBurlington to Chicago | United Airlines | 68.5% | 69.0% | 0.73% | 8am–11am, Fri | — |
| 2. BTV → ORDBurlington to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 59.7% | 61.9% | 3.53% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
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 37 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am524 flights78.3%
- 8am–11am37 flights86.5%
- 11am–2pm97 flights69.1%
- 2pm–5pm251 flights57.8%
- 5pm–8pm336 flights50.0%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 50.0% on time, against 86.5% for the 8am–11am 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 524 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 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 49.2% on time, 27 points below May, the best at 76.1%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 163 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 70.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.8%. 10 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 40,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Carrier
- 32%National Airspace System
- 16%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 40,016 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 14,000 of the 40,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.93% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
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. 12.9% 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 763 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 69.0% on time across 1,245 flights, within 3 points 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 1,245 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 76.1% on time and July 49.2%, a swing of 27 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,221 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BTV to ORD questions
How often is BTV to ORD delayed?
About 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 33.8% of the 1,245 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 BTV to ORD?
United Airlines leads at 69.0% on time across 683 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 61.9%, 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 BTV to ORD?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 86.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 50.0%, 37 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 BTV to ORD?
July is the weakest month at 49.2% on time, compared with 76.1% in May. Across the year that is 27 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 BTV — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- United Airlines on BTV to ORD69.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on BTV to ORD61.9%
- BTV to DCA, a related route66.4%
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- BTV to PHL, a related route77.0%
- Republic Airways on-time record75.0%
- United Airlines on-time record69.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record65.1%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. BTV to ORD and ORD to BTV 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.