Route reliability record
CVG→ORD
Cincinnati to Chicago
- Flights
- 4,673
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 264 mi
- Carriers
- 6
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% 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 4,673 CVG to ORD flights, of which Republic Airways flew 1,240 at 77.7% on time.
Best time to fly CVG to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 78.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 76.6%, against 70.8% for the route overall.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 77.7% on time across 1,240 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,507 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.49%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Republic
77.7% on time across 1,240 flights
These figures cover 4,673 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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 77.7% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 60.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 984 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,240 | 77.7% | 81 min | 3.39% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 1,367 | 74.3% | 78 min | 2.56% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 37 | 70.6% | 133 min | 8.11% | C− |
| United Airlines | 998 | 68.6% | 80 min | 2.51% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 984 | 60.9% | 109 min | 5.89% | D− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 47 | 34.0% | 76 min | 0.00% | F+ |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.9% 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 CVG 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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Cincinnati 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. CVG → ORDCincinnati to Chicago | Republic Airways | 75.1% | 77.7% | 3.39% | 11am–2pm, Tue | YX 3485 11:17 |
| 2. CVG → ORDCincinnati to Chicago | Envoy Air | 72.4% | 74.3% | 2.56% | 5am–8am, Tue | MQ 4094 06:00 |
| 3. CVG → ORDCincinnati to Chicago | United Airlines | 66.9% | 68.6% | 2.51% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 4. CVG → ORDCincinnati to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 57.3% | 60.9% | 5.89% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
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 27 points, against 17 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am908 flights78.6%
- 8am–11am836 flights75.8%
- 11am–2pm853 flights77.1%
- 2pm–5pm1,119 flights69.9%
- 5pm–8pm790 flights51.8%
- 8pm–5am167 flights62.3%
Scale runs 45% to 85%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.8% on time, against 78.6% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 1,119 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CVG 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 CVG to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 78.6% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 51.8%, a wide gap of 26.8 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am78.6%
- 8–11am75.8%
- 11am–2pm77.1%
- 2–5pm69.9%
- 5–8pm51.8%
- 8pm–5am62.3%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
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. May was the busiest month here, with 457 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 76.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.6%, a spread of 12 points.
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 115,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%National Airspace System
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 9%Extreme weather
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 42,000 minutes out of 115,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 115,424 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 78.6% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.49%, against 1.89% 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
11.8% 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 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 72.1% on time across 4,690 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 4,673 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 3.49% 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. 4,507 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CVG to ORD questions
How often is CVG to ORD delayed?
Roughly 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 29.2% of the 4,673 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 CVG to ORD?
Republic Airways leads at 77.7% on time across 1,240 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 60.9%, a gap of 17 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 78.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 51.8%, 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 CVG to ORD77.7%
- Envoy Air on CVG to ORD74.3%
- United Airlines on CVG to ORD68.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on CVG to ORD60.9%
- CVG to ATL, a related route85.4%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- CVG to BOS, a related route79.5%
- Republic Airways on-time record77.7%
- Envoy Air on-time record74.3%
- PSA Airlines on-time record70.6%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.
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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.