Route reliability record
CID→ORD
Cedar Rapids to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,792
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 196 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.0% 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 2,792 CID to ORD flights, of which Envoy Air flew 839 at 77.1% on time.
Best time to fly CID to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 77.1%, against 71.6% for the route overall.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 77.1% on time across 839 flights.
Key figures
On time
71.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,677 completed flights
Avg delay
94 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.01%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
77.1% on time across 839 flights
These figures cover 2,792 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.7% 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 CID to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 77.1% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 64.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 851 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 188 | 85.4% | 117 min | 5.32% | A− |
| Envoy Air | 839 | 77.1% | 85 min | 2.98% | B |
| United Airlines | 541 | 72.5% | 80 min | 1.66% | C |
| Republic Airways | 372 | 66.5% | 80 min | 6.18% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 851 | 64.8% | 112 min | 5.17% | D− |
Republic Airways cancels 6.2% 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 Cedar Rapids 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. CID → ORDCedar Rapids to Chicago | Envoy Air | 74.8% | 77.1% | 2.98% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. CID → ORDCedar Rapids to Chicago | United Airlines | 71.3% | 72.5% | 1.66% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. CID → ORDCedar Rapids to Chicago | Republic Airways | 62.4% | 66.5% | 6.18% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
| 4. CID → ORDCedar Rapids to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 61.4% | 64.8% | 5.17% | 8am–11am, Thu | — |
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 22 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am780 flights83.0%
- 8am–11am600 flights70.6%
- 11am–2pm595 flights69.8%
- 2pm–5pm359 flights65.7%
- 5pm–8pm430 flights61.4%
- 8pm–5am28 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 61.4% on time, against 83.0% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 780 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CID 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 CID to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 83.0% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 61.4%, a wide gap of 21.6 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am83.0%
- 8–11am70.6%
- 11am–2pm69.8%
- 2–5pm65.7%
- 5–8pm61.4%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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 58.8% on time, against 81.9% in September. 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 301 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.6%, 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 71,000 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 12%Extreme weather
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 71,423 reported delay minutes.
34% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 71,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations run at 4.01%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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
11.7% 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 196 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 67.1% on time across 2,793 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,792 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 4.01% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 2,677 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CID to ORD questions
How often is CID to ORD delayed?
Roughly 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 28.4% of the 2,792 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 CID to ORD?
Envoy Air leads at 77.1% on time across 839 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 64.8%, a gap of 12 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 CID to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 83.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 61.4%, 22 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 CID to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 58.8% on time, compared with 81.9% in September. Across the year that is 23 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 CID — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- American Airlines on CID to ORD85.4%
- Envoy Air on CID to ORD77.1%
- United Airlines on CID to ORD72.5%
- Republic Airways on CID to ORD66.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on CID to ORD64.8%
- CID to DFW, a related route79.2%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- CID to DEN, a related route78.8%
- American Airlines on-time record85.4%
- Envoy Air on-time record77.1%
- United Airlines on-time record72.5%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. CID to ORD and ORD to CID 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.