Route reliability record
CMX→ORD
Hancock to Chicago
- Flights
- 795
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 360 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 6.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three 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 795 CMX to ORD flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
Best time to fly CMX to ORD: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 71.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 78.2%, against 66.8% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 108 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 743 completed flights
Avg delay
134 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.29%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
66.8% on time across 795 flights
These figures cover 795 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.5% 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 CMX to ORD
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 795 | 66.8% | 134 min | 6.29% | C− |
Flight by flight
Flights on CMX 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.
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 30 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am365 flights71.7%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm363 flights66.7%
- 5pm–8pm66 flights41.3%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 35% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 41.3% on time, against 71.7% for the 8am–11am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 33 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.
January is the weak month at 53.8% on time, against 87.1% in October. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 84 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 54.5%. 24 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 33,000 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Carrier
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Extreme weather
- 15%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 21% 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 3.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 33,169 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 11,000 of the 33,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 6.29%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in fifteen 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. 15.5% 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 360 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 68.5% on time across 795 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 795 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
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 6.29% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 2.2 hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 743 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CMX to ORD questions
How often is CMX to ORD delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 33.2% of the 795 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 2.2 hours on average.
How reliable is CMX to ORD compared with the rest of the country?
66.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 11 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CMX to ORD?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 71.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 41.3%, 30 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 January delays on CMX to ORD?
January is the weakest month at 53.8% on time, compared with 87.1% in October. Across the year that is 33 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 CMX — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- BOS to ORD, a related route72.7%
- DCA to ORD, a related route74.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record66.8%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. CMX to ORD and ORD to CMX 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.