Route reliability record
DAY→ORD
Dayton to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,741
- Period
- July 2025 to June 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 1.8% 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 1,741 DAY to ORD flights, of which PSA Airlines flew 745 at 72.4% on time.
Best time to fly DAY to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.1% of the time and Saturday flights 77.6%, against 71.9% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 57 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,653 completed flights
Avg delay
100 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.88%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
72.4% on time across 745 flights
These figures cover 1,741 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.3% 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 DAY to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. PSA Airlines arrives on time 72.4% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 60.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 470 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 103 | 89.2% | 109 min | 9.71% | A− |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 69 | 80.9% | 44 min | 1.45% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 354 | 78.8% | 77 min | 2.82% | B |
| PSA Airlines | 745 | 72.4% | 110 min | 4.30% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 470 | 60.5% | 102 min | 6.81% | D− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 6.8% 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.
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 | PSA Airlines | 69.3% | 72.4% | 4.30% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 2. DAY → ORDDayton to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 56.4% | 60.5% | 6.81% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
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 22 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am220 flights83.1%
- 8am–11am435 flights82.8%
- 11am–2pm399 flights68.8%
- 2pm–5pm263 flights62.4%
- 5pm–8pm395 flights61.0%
- 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: 61.0% on time, against 83.1% 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. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 435 flights scheduled in it.
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 77.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.1%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 47,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 24%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 47,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 46,601 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 83.1% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.88%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.3% 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 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 65.3% on time across 1,744 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 1,741 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 4.88% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; 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. 1,653 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 28.1% of the 1,741 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DAY to ORD?
PSA Airlines leads at 72.4% on time across 745 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 60.5%, a gap of 12 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 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 83.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 61.0%, 22 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
- Republic Airways on DAY to ORD89.2%
- Envoy Air on DAY to ORD78.8%
- PSA Airlines on DAY to ORD72.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on DAY to ORD60.5%
- DAY to ATL, a related route89.7%
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- DAY to DFW, a related route79.0%
- Republic Airways on-time record89.2%
- United Airlines on-time record80.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record78.8%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.