Route reliability record
CWA→ORD
Mosinee to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,016
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 213 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.1% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about four flights in five arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,016 CWA to ORD flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Best time to fly CWA to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.1% of the time and Saturday flights 82.4%, against 79.7% 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
79.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 972 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.13%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
79.8% on time across 1,013 flights
These figures cover 1,016 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.6% 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 CWA 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,013 | 79.8% | 80 min | 4.15% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 3 | 66.7% | 141 min | 0.00% | C+ |
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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 16 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am364 flights87.1%
- 8am–11am165 flights84.7%
- 11am–2pm137 flights74.0%
- 2pm–5pm87 flights71.8%
- 5pm–8pm247 flights71.6%
- 8pm–5am16 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.1% of the time, against 71.6% for the evening window. That is 16 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CWA 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 CWA to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 87.1% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 71.6%, a wide gap of 15.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am87.1%
- 8–11am84.7%
- 11am–2pm74.0%
- 2–5pm71.8%
- 5–8pm71.6%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 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 59.3% on time, against 88.0% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 94 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 82.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 76.8%, a spread of 6 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 16,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 20%Carrier
- 12%Extreme weather
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 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 15,809 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one.
Cancellations run at 4.13%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
9.6% 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 213 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.6% on time across 1,016 flights, 4 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,016 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 4.13% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 972 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CWA to ORD questions
How often is CWA to ORD delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 20.3% of the 1,016 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is CWA to ORD compared with the rest of the country?
79.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 2 points in its favour. That is worth a B− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CWA to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 71.6%, 16 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 CWA to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 59.3% on time, compared with 88.0% in May. Across the year that is 29 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 CWA — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- BOS to ORD, a related route71.9%
- LAX to ORD, a related route76.4%
- Envoy Air on-time record79.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record66.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. CWA to ORD and ORD to CWA 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.