Route reliability record
GRR→ORD
Grand Rapids to Chicago
- Flights
- 4,079
- Period
- September 2025 to August 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, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 4,079 GRR to ORD flights, of which American Airlines flew 480 at 74.0% on time.
Best time to fly GRR to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 77.7% of the time and Thursday flights 73.7%, against 69.1% for the route overall.
American Airlines is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 74.0% on time across 480 flights.
Key figures
On time
69.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,954 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.99%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
74.0% on time across 480 flights
These figures cover 4,079 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.6% 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 GRR to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 74.0% of the time; United Airlines manages 63.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,085 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 480 | 74.0% | 138 min | 3.75% | C− |
| Republic Airways | 666 | 72.5% | 84 min | 3.45% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 879 | 70.4% | 111 min | 3.75% | C− |
| Envoy Air | 967 | 70.2% | 72 min | 3.72% | C− |
| United Airlines | 1,085 | 63.0% | 78 min | 1.11% | D |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 0.0% | 690 min | 0.00% | F+ |
American Airlines cancels 3.8% 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.
Flight by flight
Flights on GRR to ORD
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Grand Rapids to Chicago
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. GRR → MDWGrand Rapids to Chicago | Southwest Airlines | 78.9% | 79.2% | 0.43% | 5am–8am, Mon | — |
| 2. LAN → ORDLansing to Chicago | Envoy Air | 78.5% | 80.8% | 2.79% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. AZO → ORDKalamazoo to Chicago | Envoy Air | 75.9% | 79.3% | 4.32% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 4. GRR → ORDGrand Rapids to Chicago | American Airlines | 71.2% | 74.0% | 3.75% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 5. GRR → ORDGrand Rapids to Chicago | Republic Airways | 70.0% | 72.5% | 3.45% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
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 24 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am1,193 flights77.7%
- 8am–11am643 flights74.1%
- 11am–2pm611 flights71.4%
- 2pm–5pm705 flights66.9%
- 5pm–8pm789 flights53.4%
- 8pm–5am138 flights59.3%
Scale runs 45% to 85%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 53.4% on time, against 77.7% 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 1,193 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter GRR 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 GRR to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 77.7% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 53.4%, a wide gap of 24.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am77.7%
- 8–11am74.1%
- 11am–2pm71.4%
- 2–5pm66.9%
- 5–8pm53.4%
- 8pm–5am59.3%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
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 73.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.0%, 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 111,000 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%National Airspace System
- 26%Carrier
- 10%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 77.7% on time here. The split is drawn from 111,259 reported delay minutes.
No single cause dominates. late-arriving aircraft at 34%, national airspace system at 31% and carrier at 26% split the 111,000 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 2.99%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 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
12.6% 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 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 69.5% on time across 4,077 flights, within half a point 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 4,079 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 2.99% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 3,954 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 arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 30.9% of the 4,079 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 GRR to ORD?
American Airlines leads at 74.0% on time across 480 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 63.0%, 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 77.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 53.4%, 24 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 GRR to ORD74.0%
- Republic Airways on GRR to ORD72.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on GRR to ORD70.4%
- Envoy Air on GRR to ORD70.2%
- United Airlines on GRR to ORD63.0%
- GRR to DTW, a related route79.6%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- GRR to ATL, a related route86.7%
- American Airlines on-time record74.0%
- Republic Airways on-time record72.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record70.4%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.
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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.