Route reliability record
GRR→ORD
Grand Rapids to Chicago
- Flights
- 4,038
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 137 mi
- Carriers
- 6
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 4,038 flights, of which American Airlines flew 532 at 75.6% on time.
American Airlines is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 75.6% on time across 532 flights.
Key figures
On time
68.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,923 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.77%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
75.6% on time across 532 flights
These figures cover 4,038 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.6% 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 GRR to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 75.6% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 64.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 837 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 532 | 75.6% | 133 min | 3.38% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 661 | 70.9% | 76 min | 2.87% | C |
| Envoy Air | 931 | 69.5% | 67 min | 3.65% | C− |
| United Airlines | 1,075 | 65.1% | 73 min | 1.30% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 837 | 64.5% | 105 min | 3.23% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 0.0% | 690 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Envoy Air cancels 3.6% 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.
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 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1,168 flights78.6%
- 8am–11am632 flights74.2%
- 11am–2pm740 flights68.1%
- 2pm–5pm608 flights65.2%
- 5pm–8pm787 flights51.8%
- 8pm–5am103 flights57.0%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 1,168 flights scheduled in it.
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 54.9% on time, against 77.4% 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. April was the busiest month here, with 442 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 72.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.5%. 9 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 108,000 reported delay minutes.
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 28%Carrier
- 11%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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. The split is drawn from 107,571 reported delay minutes.
No single cause dominates. late-arriving aircraft at 31%, national airspace system at 30% and carrier at 28% split the 108,000 reported delay minutes between them. An even spread like this usually means the operation is running close to its designed capacity with no one obvious weak point, and it is the hardest pattern for a traveller to route around.
Cancellations run at 2.77%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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. 12.6% 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 137 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 70.0% on time across 4,034 flights, within 2 points 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 4,038 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.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 77.4% on time and December 54.9%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 3,923 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
GRR to ORD questions
How often is GRR to ORD delayed?
About one flight in three arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 31.7% of the 4,038 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on GRR to ORD?
American Airlines leads at 75.6% on time across 532 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 64.5%, a gap of 11 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 GRR 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 GRR to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 54.9% on time, compared with 77.4% 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 GRR — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- American Airlines on-time record75.6%
- Republic Airways on-time record70.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record69.5%
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. GRR to ORD and ORD to GRR are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.