Route reliability record
CID→ORD
Cedar Rapids to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,715
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 196 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% 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 2,715 flights, of which Envoy Air flew 965 at 75.8% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 75.8% on time across 965 flights.
Key figures
On time
72.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,612 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.76%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
75.8% on time across 965 flights
These figures cover 2,715 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.0% 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 CID to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 75.8% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 65.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 812 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 126 | 86.7% | 58 min | 4.76% | A− |
| Envoy Air | 965 | 75.8% | 70 min | 2.69% | B |
| United Airlines | 457 | 75.4% | 78 min | 2.19% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 354 | 66.9% | 79 min | 6.21% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 812 | 65.6% | 115 min | 4.56% | C− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 4.6% 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 39 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am797 flights83.1%
- 8am–11am601 flights72.4%
- 11am–2pm548 flights71.3%
- 2pm–5pm368 flights64.1%
- 5pm–8pm341 flights59.9%
- 8pm–5am60 flights44.0%
Scale runs 35% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 44.0% on time, against 83.1% 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 797 flights scheduled in it.
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 77.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.2%. 8 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 65,000 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 12%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 64,744 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, 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 22,000 of the 65,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.76%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.0% 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.
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 67.8% on time across 2,715 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 2,715 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 delay figures matter less here than the 3.76% 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. 2,612 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 arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 27.9% of the 2,715 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 CID to ORD?
Envoy Air leads at 75.8% on time across 965 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 65.6%, a gap of 10 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 83.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 44.0%, 39 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-time record86.7%
- Envoy Air on-time record75.8%
- United Airlines on-time record75.4%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.