Route reliability record
ELP→ORD
El Paso to Chicago
- Flights
- 726
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,236 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 726 ELP to ORD flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly ELP to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.5% of the time and Thursday flights 87.6%, against 82.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 51 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 712 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.52%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
—
No carrier clears the floor
These figures cover 726 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ELP 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 45 | 88.4% | 99 min | 4.44% | A− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 291 | 87.5% | 48 min | 0.69% | A+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 126 | 84.8% | 119 min | 0.79% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 262 | 76.0% | 60 min | 2.29% | B |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 0.0% | 30 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 726 flights.
- 5am–8am335 flights86.5%
- 8am–11am256 flights80.8%
- 11am–2pm135 flights77.0%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 77.0% on time against 86.5% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 335 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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.
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 69.8%. February is the strongest month at 91.1%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 21 points. May was the busiest month here, with 63 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 87.6% on time and Saturday the weakest at 79.2%. 8 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 8,224 reported delay minutes.
- 37%National Airspace System
- 36%Carrier
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%Extreme weather
37% 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 3,073 minutes out of 8,224, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 8,224 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 2,958 of the 8,224 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.52% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.41%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.5% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 1,236 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.9% on time across 723 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 726 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: treat all of this as provisional. 726 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 82.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 712 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ELP to ORD questions
How often is ELP to ORD delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.3% of the 726 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is ELP to ORD compared with the rest of the country?
82.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ELP to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.5% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 77.0%, 10 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 May delays on ELP to ORD?
May is the weakest month at 69.8% on time, compared with 91.1% in February. Across the year that is 21 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 ELP — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ELP to ORD87.5%
- Republic Airways on ELP to ORD84.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on ELP to ORD76.0%
- ELP to DFW, a related route77.9%
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- ELP to PHX, a related route81.1%
- American Airlines on-time record88.4%
- Envoy Air on-time record87.5%
- Republic Airways on-time record84.8%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. ELP to ORD and ORD to ELP 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.