Route reliability record
HSV→ORD
Huntsville to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,018
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 510 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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 close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 1,018 HSV to ORD flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
Best time to fly HSV to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 78.2% of the time and Wednesday flights 78.1%, against 69.5% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 78 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 983 completed flights
Avg delay
107 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.05%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
69.2% on time across 1,002 flights
These figures cover 1,018 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.9% 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 HSV 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 Airthin sample | 16 | 87.5% | 49 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,002 | 69.2% | 107 min | 3.09% | C− |
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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 31 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am463 flights78.2%
- 8am–11am126 flights75.2%
- 11am–2pm213 flights64.4%
- 2pm–5pm105 flights57.0%
- 5pm–8pm109 flights47.1%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 40% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 47.1% on time, against 78.2% 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 463 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter HSV 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 HSV to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 78.2% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 47.1%, a wide gap of 31.1 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am78.2%
- 8–11am75.2%
- 11am–2pm64.4%
- 2–5pm57.0%
- 5–8pm47.1%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 40% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 37 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.
February is the weak month at 58.0% on time, against 94.7% in June. 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. November was the busiest month here, with 144 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 58.7%, a spread of 19 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 48% of the 32,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%Carrier
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
- 2%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 15,000 of the 32,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 31,949 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.05%, 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
13.9% 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.
The 510 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 65.3% on time across 1,018 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,018 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: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.05% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; 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. 983 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
HSV to ORD questions
How often is HSV to ORD delayed?
Roughly 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 30.5% of the 1,018 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is HSV to ORD compared with the rest of the country?
69.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 8 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on HSV to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 78.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 47.1%, 31 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 February delays on HSV to ORD?
February is the weakest month at 58.0% on time, compared with 94.7% in June. Across the year that is 37 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 HSV — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- HSV to ATL, a related route89.0%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- HSV to DFW, a related route78.8%
- Envoy Air on-time record87.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record69.2%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. HSV to ORD and ORD to HSV 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.