Route reliability record
COU→ORD
Columbia to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,903
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 315 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.6% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten 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 1,903 COU to ORD flights, of which Envoy Air flew 1,125 at 75.7% on time.
Best time to fly COU to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.3% of the time and Wednesday flights 76.4%, against 72.7% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 49 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,827 completed flights
Avg delay
95 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.63%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
75.7% on time across 1,125 flights
These figures cover 1,903 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.6% 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 COU to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 75.7% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 68.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 778 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,125 | 75.7% | 78 min | 2.76% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 778 | 68.2% | 115 min | 4.88% | C− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 4.9% 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.
Flight by flight
Flights on COU 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Columbia to Chicago
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. COU → ORDColumbia to Chicago | Envoy Air | 73.6% | 75.7% | 2.76% | 5am–8am, Tue | MQ 3655 06:00 |
| 2. COU → ORDColumbia to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 64.9% | 68.2% | 4.88% | 8am–11am, Mon | — |
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 31 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am381 flights85.3%
- 8am–11am451 flights75.4%
- 11am–2pm356 flights72.5%
- 2pm–5pm422 flights69.1%
- 5pm–8pm261 flights56.7%
- 8pm–5am32 flights54.8%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 54.8% on time, against 85.3% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 451 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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 59.2% on time, against 81.0% in February. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 205 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 76.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.8%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 48,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
45% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 48,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 47,568 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 85.3% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.63%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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. 12.6% 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 315 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 70.4% on time across 1,903 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 1,903 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 3.63% 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. 1,827 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
COU to ORD questions
How often is COU 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 27.3% of the 1,903 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on COU to ORD?
Envoy Air leads at 75.7% on time across 1,125 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 68.2%, 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 COU to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 54.8%, 31 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 COU to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 59.2% on time, compared with 81.0% in February. Across the year that is 22 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 COU — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on COU to ORD75.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on COU to ORD68.2%
- COU to DFW, a related route82.4%
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- BOS to ORD, a related route72.7%
- Envoy Air on-time record75.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record68.2%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. COU to ORD and ORD to COU are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed COU 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.