Route reliability record
DAY→ORD
Dayton to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,810
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 240 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.9% 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 1,810 DAY to ORD flights, of which Envoy Air flew 464 at 78.7% on time.
Best time to fly DAY to ORD: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 82.2% of the time and Saturday flights 77.0%, against 72.7% for the route overall.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 78.7% on time across 464 flights.
Key figures
On time
72.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,720 completed flights
Avg delay
100 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.86%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
78.7% on time across 464 flights
These figures cover 1,810 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.0% 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 DAY to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 78.7% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 62.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 621 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 95 | 90.6% | 106 min | 10.53% | A− |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 69 | 80.9% | 44 min | 1.45% | B |
| Envoy Air | 464 | 78.7% | 89 min | 3.02% | B− |
| PSA Airlines | 561 | 75.0% | 111 min | 4.28% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 621 | 62.4% | 101 min | 6.28% | D− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 6.3% 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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dayton 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. DAY → ORDDayton to Chicago | Envoy Air | 76.3% | 78.7% | 3.02% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 2. DAY → ORDDayton to Chicago | PSA Airlines | 71.8% | 75.0% | 4.28% | 5pm–8pm, Fri | — |
| 3. DAY → ORDDayton to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 58.5% | 62.4% | 6.28% | 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 20 points, against 16 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am239 flights82.0%
- 8am–11am409 flights82.2%
- 11am–2pm394 flights73.9%
- 2pm–5pm334 flights63.1%
- 5pm–8pm405 flights62.3%
- 8pm–5am29 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.3% on time, against 82.2% for the 8am–11am 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 409 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DAY 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 DAY to ORD, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 82.2% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 62.3%, a wide gap of 19.9 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am82.0%
- 8–11am82.2%
- 11am–2pm73.9%
- 2–5pm63.1%
- 5–8pm62.3%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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.
February is the weak month at 60.2% on time, against 88.6% in October. 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. November was the busiest month here, with 229 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 77.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.7%, a spread of 10 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 47,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 27%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 47,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 46,941 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 82.2% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.86%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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
14.0% 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 240 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 66.2% on time across 1,815 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,810 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 4.86% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,720 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DAY to ORD questions
How often is DAY to ORD delayed?
Roughly 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 27.3% of the 1,810 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 DAY to ORD?
Envoy Air leads at 78.7% on time across 464 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 62.4%, a gap of 16 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 DAY to ORD?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 82.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 62.3%, 20 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 February delays on DAY to ORD?
February is the weakest month at 60.2% on time, compared with 88.6% in October. Across the year that is 28 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 DAY — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on DAY to ORD78.7%
- PSA Airlines on DAY to ORD75.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on DAY to ORD62.4%
- DAY to ATL, a related route89.4%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- DAY to CLT, a related route82.3%
- Republic Airways on-time record90.6%
- United Airlines on-time record80.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record78.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DAY to ORD and ORD to DAY 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.