Route reliability record
GSO→ORD
Greensboro to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,556
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 589 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,556 GSO to ORD flights, of which Envoy Air flew 875 at 80.7% on time.
Best time to fly GSO to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.7% of the time and Saturday flights 80.0%, against 77.9% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,500 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.28%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
80.7% on time across 875 flights
These figures cover 1,556 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% 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 GSO to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 80.7% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 72.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 600 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 81 | 88.3% | 82 min | 4.94% | A− |
| Envoy Air | 875 | 80.7% | 78 min | 2.74% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 600 | 72.5% | 73 min | 3.83% | C− |
SkyWest 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 GSO 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Greensboro 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. GSO → ORDGreensboro to Chicago | Envoy Air | 78.5% | 80.7% | 2.74% | 5am–8am, Sat | MQ 3413 07:30 |
| 2. GSO → ORDGreensboro to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 69.7% | 72.5% | 3.83% | 5am–8am, Thu | OO 4776 17:32 |
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 25 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am516 flights88.7%
- 8am–11am108 flights76.9%
- 11am–2pm361 flights82.1%
- 2pm–5pm6 flights—
- 5pm–8pm385 flights63.6%
- 8pm–5am180 flights68.9%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.6% on time, against 88.7% 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 516 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.
January is the weak month at 66.7% on time, against 89.2% in August. 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 178 flights.
The day of the week is close to irrelevant here: 4 points separates the best day from the worst. Weekly demand peaks are not what drives the delays on this operation.
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 25,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
40% 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 25,000 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 25,128 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 88.7% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.28%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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
8.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 589 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 runs 77.8% on time across 1,558 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 1,556 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 3.28% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 1,500 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
GSO to ORD questions
How often is GSO to ORD delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.1% of the 1,556 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on GSO to ORD?
Envoy Air leads at 80.7% on time across 875 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 72.5%, a gap of 8 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 GSO to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 88.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 63.6%, 25 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 January delays on GSO to ORD?
January is the weakest month at 66.7% on time, compared with 89.2% in August. 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 GSO — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on GSO to ORD80.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on GSO to ORD72.5%
- GSO to ATL, a related route89.6%
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- GSO to LGA, a related route77.2%
- Republic Airways on-time record88.3%
- Envoy Air on-time record80.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record72.5%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. GSO to ORD and ORD to GSO 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.