Route reliability record
CRW→ORD
Charleston to Chicago
- Flights
- 947
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 416 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.4% 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 D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 947 CRW to ORD flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
Best time to fly CRW to ORD: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 76.9% of the time and Thursday flights 71.2%, against 64.8% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 128 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 909 completed flights
Avg delay
102 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.38%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
64.8% on time across 947 flights
These figures cover 947 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 CRW 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 | 947 | 64.8% | 102 min | 3.38% | D− |
Flight by flight
Flights on CRW 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 33 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–8am324 flights76.8%
- 8am–11am44 flights76.7%
- 11am–2pm39 flights76.9%
- 2pm–5pm194 flights74.9%
- 5pm–8pm344 flights44.1%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 35% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 44.1% on time, against 76.9% for the 11am–2pm 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 344 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 50.0% on time, against 72.1% in April. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 105 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 71.2% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 60.6%. 11 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 32,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Carrier
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 12,000 of the 32,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 32,499 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.38%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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. 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 416 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 62.0% on time across 947 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 947 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 3.38% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 909 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CRW to ORD questions
How often is CRW 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 35.2% of the 947 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is CRW to ORD compared with the rest of the country?
64.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 13 points against it. That is worth a D− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CRW to ORD?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 76.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 44.1%, 33 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 CRW to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 50.0% on time, compared with 72.1% in April. 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 CRW — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- CRW to CLT, a related route79.4%
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- BOS to ORD, a related route72.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record64.8%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. CRW to ORD and ORD to CRW 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.