Route reliability record
CVG→ORD
Cincinnati to Chicago
- Flights
- 4,590
- Period
- June 2025 to May 2026
- Distance
- 264 mi
- Carriers
- 6
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.4%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 4,590 flights, of which Republic Airways flew 1,388 at 76.3% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 76.3% on time across 1,388 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,442 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.09%
National rate is 1.80%
Best carrier
Republic
76.3% on time across 1,388 flights
These figures cover 4,590 flights between June 2025 and May 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.5% 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 CVG to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 76.3% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 58.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 871 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,388 | 76.3% | 79 min | 3.03% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 1,305 | 72.4% | 71 min | 2.22% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 37 | 70.6% | 133 min | 8.11% | C− |
| United Airlines | 921 | 70.4% | 70 min | 2.06% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 871 | 58.6% | 110 min | 5.51% | D− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 68 | 41.8% | 75 min | 1.47% | F |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.5% 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 27 points, against 18 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am959 flights80.1%
- 8am–11am649 flights73.0%
- 11am–2pm819 flights75.1%
- 2pm–5pm1,130 flights70.9%
- 5pm–8pm872 flights53.2%
- 8pm–5am161 flights56.3%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 53.2% on time, against 80.1% 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 23 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 56.0% on time, against 78.7% 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, Wednesday is the strongest day at 74.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.2%. 10 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 110,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%National Airspace System
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 9%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
36% 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 40,000 minutes out of 110,000, 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 80.1% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.09%, against 1.80% 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. 11.5% 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 264 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 71.4% on time across 4,607 flights, within about a point 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 4,590 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 delay figures matter less here than the 3.09% 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.
Common questions
CVG to ORD questions
How often is CVG to ORD delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 29.9% of the 4,590 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 CVG to ORD?
Republic Airways leads at 76.3% on time across 1,388 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 58.6%, a gap of 18 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 CVG to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 80.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 53.2%, 27 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 CVG to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 56.0% on time, compared with 78.7% in May. Across the year that is 23 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 CVG — the return legseparate record
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on-time record76.3%
- Envoy Air on-time record72.4%
- PSA Airlines on-time record70.6%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. CVG to ORD and ORD to CVG 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.