Route reliability record
CHO→ORD
Charlottesville to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,236
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 566 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,236 CHO to ORD flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Best time to fly CHO to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 80.6% of the time and Thursday flights 72.8%, against 68.9% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 84 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,172 completed flights
Avg delay
118 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.45%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
68.9% on time across 1,236 flights
These figures cover 1,236 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.5% 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 CHO to ORD
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,236 | 68.9% | 118 min | 4.45% | C− |
Flight by flight
Flights on CHO to ORD
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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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 24 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am326 flights80.6%
- 8am–11am252 flights65.7%
- 11am–2pm167 flights78.8%
- 2pm–5pm142 flights63.2%
- 5pm–8pm347 flights57.0%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.0% on time, against 80.6% 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 347 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CHO 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 CHO to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 80.6% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 57.0%, a wide gap of 23.6 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am80.6%
- 8–11am65.7%
- 11am–2pm78.8%
- 2–5pm63.2%
- 5–8pm57.0%
- 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 40 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 44.6% on time, against 84.7% 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. April was the busiest month here, with 146 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 72.8% on time and Saturday the weakest at 62.6%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 45% of the 43,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Carrier
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 20,000 of the 43,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 43,002 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 80.6% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.45%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty 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
16.5% 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.
The 566 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 65.9% on time across 1,236 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,236 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 4.45% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,172 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CHO to ORD questions
How often is CHO 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 31.1% of the 1,236 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is CHO to ORD compared with the rest of the country?
68.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 8 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CHO to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 80.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 57.0%, 24 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 CHO to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 44.6% on time, compared with 84.7% in June. Across the year that is 40 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 CHO — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- BOS to ORD, a related route71.9%
- LAX to ORD, a related route76.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record68.9%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. CHO to ORD and ORD to CHO 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.