Route reliability record
CLT→ORD
Charlotte to Chicago
- Flights
- 4,489
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 599 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 4,489 CLT to ORD flights, of which Republic Airways flew 455 at 81.3% on time.
Best time to fly CLT to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 76.8%, against 72.4% for the route overall.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 81.3% on time across 455 flights.
Key figures
On time
72.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,342 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.83%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Republic
81.3% on time across 455 flights
These figures cover 4,489 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on CLT to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 81.3% of the time; United Airlines manages 69.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 493 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 455 | 81.3% | 110 min | 2.86% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 259 | 77.5% | 142 min | 5.41% | B− |
| American Airlines | 3,144 | 71.5% | 78 min | 2.70% | C |
| United Airlines | 493 | 69.2% | 79 min | 1.83% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 138 | 65.6% | 127 min | 4.35% | C− |
The spread between Republic and United is 12 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 12 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Charlotte 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 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. CLT → ORDCharlotte to Chicago | Republic Airways | 79.0% | 81.3% | 2.86% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 2. CLT → MDWCharlotte to Chicago | Southwest Airlines | 75.1% | 76.4% | 1.66% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. CLT → ORDCharlotte to Chicago | American Airlines | 69.6% | 71.5% | 2.70% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 4. CLT → ORDCharlotte to Chicago | United Airlines | 67.9% | 69.2% | 1.83% | 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 29 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am473 flights85.5%
- 8am–11am972 flights83.8%
- 11am–2pm775 flights76.7%
- 2pm–5pm983 flights67.2%
- 5pm–8pm747 flights56.2%
- 8pm–5am539 flights65.4%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.2% on time, against 85.5% 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 983 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CLT 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 CLT to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 85.5% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 56.2%, a wide gap of 29.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am85.5%
- 8–11am83.8%
- 11am–2pm76.7%
- 2–5pm67.2%
- 5–8pm56.2%
- 8pm–5am65.4%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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.
August is the worst month at 63.9% on time, 17 points below September, the best at 80.8%. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 434 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 76.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.7%, 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 102,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%National Airspace System
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 102,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 101,929 reported delay minutes.
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 38,000 minutes out of 102,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 2.83%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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
11.4% 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 599 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 runs 73.7% on time across 4,494 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 4,489 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 2.83% 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. 4,342 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLT to ORD questions
How often is CLT 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 27.6% of the 4,489 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 CLT to ORD?
Republic Airways leads at 81.3% on time across 455 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 69.2%, 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 CLT to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 56.2%, 29 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 August delays on CLT to ORD?
August is the weakest month at 63.9% on time, compared with 80.8% in September. Across the year that is 17 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 CLT — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on CLT to ORD81.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on CLT to ORD77.5%
- American Airlines on CLT to ORD71.5%
- United Airlines on CLT to ORD69.2%
- Frontier Airlines on CLT to ORD65.6%
- CLT to MCO, a related route71.6%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- CLT to ATL, a related route81.3%
- Republic Airways on-time record81.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record77.5%
- American Airlines on-time record71.5%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. CLT to ORD and ORD to CLT are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed CLT to ORD’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.