Route reliability record
CLE→ORD
Cleveland to Chicago
- Flights
- 4,895
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 316 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four 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 4,895 CLE to ORD flights, of which Republic Airways flew 587 at 76.9% on time.
Best time to fly CLE to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.7% of the time and Saturday flights 77.3%, against 74.5% for the route overall.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 76.9% on time across 587 flights.
Key figures
On time
74.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,730 completed flights
Avg delay
84 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.25%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Republic
76.9% on time across 587 flights
These figures cover 4,895 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% 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 CLE to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 76.9% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 69.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 854 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 587 | 76.9% | 75 min | 6.64% | B− |
| United Airlines | 2,181 | 75.6% | 79 min | 1.47% | B |
| American Airlines | 395 | 75.0% | 109 min | 3.54% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 878 | 74.9% | 78 min | 4.33% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 854 | 69.2% | 97 min | 4.22% | C− |
Republic Airways cancels 6.6% 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.
Flight by flight
Flights on CLE 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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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Cleveland 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. 1 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. CLE → MDWCleveland to Chicago | Southwest Airlines | 80.0% | 80.9% | 1.08% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. CLE → ORDCleveland to Chicago | United Airlines | 74.5% | 75.6% | 1.47% | 5am–8am, Sat | UA 609 11:00 |
| 3. CLE → ORDCleveland to Chicago | American Airlines | 72.3% | 75.0% | 3.54% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 4. CLE → ORDCleveland to Chicago | Republic Airways | 71.8% | 76.9% | 6.64% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 5. CLE → ORDCleveland to Chicago | Envoy Air | 71.7% | 74.9% | 4.33% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
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 27 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am980 flights86.7%
- 8am–11am823 flights77.7%
- 11am–2pm629 flights80.4%
- 2pm–5pm1,163 flights73.8%
- 5pm–8pm1,012 flights59.3%
- 8pm–5am288 flights63.8%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.3% on time, against 86.7% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 1,163 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CLE 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 CLE to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 86.7% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 59.3%, a wide gap of 27.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am86.7%
- 8–11am77.7%
- 11am–2pm80.4%
- 2–5pm73.8%
- 5–8pm59.3%
- 8pm–5am63.8%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
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.
December is the weak month at 66.6% on time, against 81.3% 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 481 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 77.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.6%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
National Airspace System accounts for 42% of the 102,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 42%National Airspace System
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% 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 43,000 minutes out of 102,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 101,901 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 86.7% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.25%, against 1.89% 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
10.5% 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.
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 70.8% on time across 4,893 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 4,895 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 3.25% 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. 4,730 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLE to ORD questions
How often is CLE 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 25.5% of the 4,895 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 CLE to ORD?
Republic Airways leads at 76.9% on time across 587 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 69.2%, a gap of 8 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 86.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 59.3%, 27 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 CLE to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 66.6% 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
- Republic Airways on CLE to ORD76.9%
- United Airlines on CLE to ORD75.6%
- American Airlines on CLE to ORD75.0%
- Envoy Air on CLE to ORD74.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on CLE to ORD69.2%
- CLE to ATL, a related route84.6%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- CLE to EWR, a related route80.1%
- Republic Airways on-time record76.9%
- United Airlines on-time record75.6%
- American Airlines on-time record75.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.
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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.