Route reliability record
HPN→ORD
White Plains to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,499
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 738 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about four flights in five 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 1,499 HPN to ORD flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly HPN to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.8% of the time and Saturday flights 88.8%, against 78.7% 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
78.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,439 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.80%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
78.7% on time across 1,499 flights
These figures cover 1,499 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.7% 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 HPN 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,499 | 78.7% | 86 min | 3.80% | B− |
Flight by flight
Flights on HPN 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 White Plains 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. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. HPN → ORDWhite Plains to Chicago | Envoy Air | 75.7% | 78.7% | 3.80% | 5am–8am, Sat | MQ 3496 06:00 |
| 2. EWR → ORDNewark to Chicago | American Airlines | 74.8% | 77.8% | 3.81% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. JFK → ORDNew York to Chicago | Republic Airways | 72.6% | 76.8% | 5.53% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 4. EWR → ORDNewark to Chicago | United Airlines | 69.5% | 71.1% | 2.26% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 2164 06:00 |
| 5. JFK → ORDNew York to Chicago | American Airlines | 69.3% | 73.0% | 5.07% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
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 half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am566 flights89.8%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm359 flights76.9%
- 2pm–5pm353 flights68.7%
- 5pm–8pm221 flights68.0%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.8% of the time, against 68.0% for the evening window. That is 22 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 566 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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 67.4% on time, against 89.7% in September. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 148 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 88.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 72.5%. 16 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 27,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%National Airspace System
- 15%Carrier
- 15%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 15% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 26,528 reported delay minutes.
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 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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.
Cancellations run at 3.80%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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. 9.7% 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.
The 738 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 77.3% on time across 1,499 flights, within about 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 1,499 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 3.80% 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. 1,439 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
HPN to ORD questions
How often is HPN to ORD delayed?
About 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 21.3% of the 1,499 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is HPN to ORD compared with the rest of the country?
78.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about a point in its favour. That is worth a B− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on HPN to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 68.0%, 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 December delays on HPN to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 67.4% on time, compared with 89.7% in September. Across the year that is 22 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 HPN — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- HPN to PBI, a related route73.9%
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- HPN to DCA, a related route62.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record78.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. HPN to ORD and ORD to HPN 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.