Route reliability record
BUF→ORD
Buffalo to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,205
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 474 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, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 2,205 BUF to ORD flights, of which American Airlines flew 478 at 82.2% on time.
Best time to fly BUF to ORD: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.6% of the time and Thursday flights 78.8%, against 74.4% for the route overall.
American Airlines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 82.2% on time across 478 flights.
Key figures
On time
74.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,134 completed flights
Avg delay
100 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.08%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
82.2% on time across 478 flights
These figures cover 2,205 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.3% 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 BUF to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 82.2% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 62.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 390 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 478 | 82.2% | 127 min | 2.72% | B |
| Republic Airways | 427 | 78.0% | 94 min | 3.04% | B− |
| United Airlines | 588 | 74.7% | 84 min | 1.19% | C |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 322 | 71.4% | 67 min | 3.11% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 390 | 62.4% | 126 min | 6.41% | D− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 6.4% 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 Buffalo 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. 3 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BUF → ORDBuffalo to Chicago | American Airlines | 80.0% | 82.2% | 2.72% | 11am–2pm, Wed | — |
| 2. ROC → ORDRochester to Chicago | Republic Airways | 80.0% | 81.9% | 2.37% | 8am–11am, Fri | — |
| 3. ROC → ORDRochester to Chicago | Envoy Air | 77.7% | 79.5% | 2.24% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 4. BUF → ORDBuffalo to Chicago | Republic Airways | 75.6% | 78.0% | 3.04% | 8am–11am, Thu | — |
| 5. BUF → MDWBuffalo to Chicago | Southwest Airlines | 74.0% | 75.2% | 1.57% | 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 29 points, against 20 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am677 flights83.5%
- 8am–11am375 flights84.5%
- 11am–2pm348 flights84.6%
- 2pm–5pm212 flights62.1%
- 5pm–8pm590 flights55.3%
- 8pm–5am3 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: 55.3% on time, against 84.6% for the 11am–2pm 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 677 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BUF 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 BUF to ORD, the best departure window is 11am–2pm at 84.6% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 55.3%, a wide gap of 29.3 points. All US flights leaving 11am–2pm ran 78.3%.
- 5–8am83.5%
- 8–11am84.5%
- 11am–2pm84.6%
- 2–5pm62.1%
- 5–8pm55.3%
- 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 19 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.
January is the weak month at 64.5% on time, against 83.1% in June. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 217 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 78.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.3%, a spread of 7 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 55,000 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 30%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
No single cause dominates. late-arriving aircraft at 34%, carrier at 31% and national airspace system at 30% split the 55,000 reported delay minutes between them. An even spread like this usually means the operation is running close to its designed capacity with no one obvious weak point, and it is the hardest pattern for a traveller to route around. The split is drawn from 54,654 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.08%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 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
11.3% 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.
At 474 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.4% on time across 2,204 flights, 4 points below 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,205 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 3.08% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 2,134 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BUF to ORD questions
How often is BUF 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 25.6% of the 2,205 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 BUF to ORD?
American Airlines leads at 82.2% on time across 478 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 62.4%, a gap of 20 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 BUF to ORD?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 84.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 55.3%, 29 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 January delays on BUF to ORD?
January is the weakest month at 64.5% on time, compared with 83.1% in June. Across the year that is 19 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 BUF — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- American Airlines on BUF to ORD82.2%
- Republic Airways on BUF to ORD78.0%
- United Airlines on BUF to ORD74.7%
- Envoy Air on BUF to ORD71.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on BUF to ORD62.4%
- BUF to MCO, a related route75.4%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- BUF to BWI, a related route87.0%
- American Airlines on-time record82.2%
- Republic Airways on-time record78.0%
- United Airlines on-time record74.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. BUF to ORD and ORD to BUF 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.