Route reliability record
COU→ORD
Columbia to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,054
- Period
- September 2025 to August 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 1.9% 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 2,054 COU to ORD flights, of which Envoy Air flew 1,152 at 76.9% on time.
Best time to fly COU to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.8% of the time and Thursday flights 78.2%, against 73.7% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
73.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,971 completed flights
Avg delay
99 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.65%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
76.9% on time across 1,152 flights
These figures cover 2,054 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.4% 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 COU to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 76.9% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 69.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 902 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,152 | 76.9% | 83 min | 2.69% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 902 | 69.6% | 116 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.
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 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 | 74.8% | 76.9% | 2.69% | 5am–8am, Wed | MQ 3655 06:00 |
| 2. COU → ORDColumbia to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 66.2% | 69.6% | 4.88% | 5am–8am, Thu | OO 5609 08:00 |
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 25 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am402 flights85.8%
- 8am–11am534 flights76.2%
- 11am–2pm350 flights72.2%
- 2pm–5pm461 flights69.6%
- 5pm–8pm307 flights60.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.6% on time, against 85.8% 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 534 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter COU 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 COU to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 85.8% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 60.6%, a wide gap of 25.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am85.8%
- 8–11am76.2%
- 11am–2pm72.2%
- 2–5pm69.6%
- 5–8pm60.6%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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 83.3% in July. 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, Thursday is the strongest day at 78.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.6%, a spread of 12 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 52,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 12%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 51,512 reported delay minutes.
44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 52,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one.
Cancellations run at 3.65%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 25 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
12.4% 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.
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 70.8% on time across 2,054 flights, within 3 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 2,054 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 3.65% 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. 1,971 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
COU to ORD questions
How often is COU 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 26.3% of the 2,054 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 COU to ORD?
Envoy Air leads at 76.9% on time across 1,152 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 69.6%, a gap of 7 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 85.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 60.6%, 25 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 83.3% in July. Across the year that is 24 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 ORD76.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on COU to ORD69.6%
- COU to DFW, a related route84.0%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- BOS to ORD, a related route71.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record76.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record69.6%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.