Route reliability record
CLE→ORD
Cleveland to Chicago
- Flights
- 4,941
- Period
- June 2025 to May 2026
- Distance
- 316 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 77.4%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 4,941 flights, of which United Airlines flew 2,184 at 77.9% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 77.9% on time across 2,184 flights.
Key figures
On time
74.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,779 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.14%
National rate is 1.80%
Best carrier
United
77.9% on time across 2,184 flights
These figures cover 4,941 flights between June 2025 and May 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.3% 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 CLE to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 77.9% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 65.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 934 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 2,184 | 77.9% | 72 min | 1.28% | B |
| Republic Airways | 560 | 76.6% | 75 min | 5.89% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 848 | 73.2% | 72 min | 4.01% | C− |
| American Airlines | 415 | 73.0% | 129 min | 5.30% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 934 | 65.8% | 117 min | 4.07% | C− |
Republic Airways cancels 5.9% 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 33 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1,056 flights87.8%
- 8am–11am813 flights79.7%
- 11am–2pm609 flights81.9%
- 2pm–5pm1,219 flights72.5%
- 5pm–8pm978 flights57.0%
- 8pm–5am266 flights55.2%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 55.2% on time, against 87.8% 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.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 15 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 66.5% on time, 15 points below September, the best at 81.3%. 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.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 76.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.9%. 7 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 109,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%National Airspace System
- 30%Carrier
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
37% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 41,000 minutes out of 109,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
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 87.8% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.14%, against 1.80% nationally. That is about 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.2% 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 316 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 69.8% on time across 4,943 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 4,941 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 3.14% 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.
Common questions
CLE to ORD questions
How often is CLE to ORD delayed?
About 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 25.7% of the 4,941 flights in this analysis, against 22.6% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on CLE to ORD?
United Airlines leads at 77.9% on time across 2,184 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 65.8%, 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 CLE to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.8% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 55.2%, 33 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 CLE to ORD?
July is the weakest month at 66.5% on time, compared with 81.3% in September. Across the year that is 15 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 CLE — the return legseparate record
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- United Airlines on-time record77.9%
- Republic Airways on-time record76.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record73.2%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. CLE to ORD and ORD to CLE 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, June 2025 to May 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.