Route reliability record
CMH→ORD
Columbus to Chicago
- Flights
- 4,791
- Period
- June 2025 to May 2026
- Distance
- 296 mi
- Carriers
- 6
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, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.4%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 4,791 flights, of which Republic Airways flew 1,470 at 83.9% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 83.9% on time across 1,470 flights.
Key figures
On time
73.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,684 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.19%
National rate is 1.80%
Best carrier
Republic
83.9% on time across 1,470 flights
These figures cover 4,791 flights between June 2025 and May 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% 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 CMH to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 83.9% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 60.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 541 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 128 | 85.6% | 95 min | 2.34% | A |
| Republic Airways | 1,470 | 83.9% | 68 min | 1.90% | B |
| Envoy Air | 1,388 | 74.2% | 95 min | 1.80% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 54 | 69.8% | 75 min | 1.85% | C |
| United Airlines | 1,210 | 65.3% | 81 min | 1.57% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 541 | 60.2% | 107 min | 5.36% | D− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.4% 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 32 points, against 24 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1,261 flights83.4%
- 8am–11am1,159 flights79.4%
- 11am–2pm454 flights81.0%
- 2pm–5pm1,048 flights69.8%
- 5pm–8pm604 flights51.8%
- 8pm–5am265 flights51.4%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 51.4% on time, against 83.4% 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 25 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 58.6% on time, against 83.9% in May. 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.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 79.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 67.5%. 12 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 107,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%National Airspace System
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
35% 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 37,000 minutes out of 107,000, 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 83.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.19% against a national 1.80%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.04%.
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. 10.5% 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 296 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 runs 72.0% on time across 4,794 flights, within 2 points 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 4,791 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 calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 83.9% on time and December 58.6%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else.
Common questions
CMH to ORD questions
How often is CMH 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 26.3% of the 4,791 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 CMH to ORD?
Republic Airways leads at 83.9% on time across 1,470 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 60.2%, a gap of 24 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 CMH to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 83.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 51.4%, 32 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 CMH to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 58.6% on time, compared with 83.9% in May. Across the year that is 25 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 CMH — the return legseparate record
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- American Airlines on-time record85.6%
- Republic Airways on-time record83.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record74.2%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
Direction matters. CMH to ORD and ORD to CMH 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.