Route reliability record
JFK→ORD
New York to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,013
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 740 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 2,013 JFK to ORD flights, of which Republic Airways flew 759 at 76.8% on time.
Best time to fly JFK to ORD: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 77.6%, against 71.5% for the route overall.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 76.8% on time across 759 flights.
Key figures
On time
71.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,904 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.82%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Republic
76.8% on time across 759 flights
These figures cover 2,013 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.3% 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 JFK to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 76.8% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 67.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 572 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 759 | 76.8% | 83 min | 5.53% | B− |
| American Airlines | 552 | 73.0% | 89 min | 5.07% | C− |
| JetBlue Airways | 572 | 67.7% | 82 min | 3.85% | C− |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 14 | 61.5% | 266 min | 0.00% | D+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 116 | 51.4% | 101 min | 4.31% | F− |
Republic Airways cancels 5.5% 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly New York 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. 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 24 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am190 flights78.5%
- 8am–11am430 flights81.2%
- 11am–2pm357 flights77.8%
- 2pm–5pm436 flights67.2%
- 5pm–8pm412 flights63.4%
- 8pm–5am188 flights56.9%
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.9% on time, against 81.2% for the 8am–11am 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 436 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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 56.5% on time, against 84.0% 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. June was the busiest month here, with 202 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.4%. 10 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 47,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
41% 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 47,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 21 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 47,466 reported delay minutes.
33% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 16,000 minutes out of 47,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 4.82%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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. 13.3% 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 740 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 73.4% on time across 2,012 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 2,013 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 4.82% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,904 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
JFK to ORD questions
How often is JFK to ORD delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 28.5% of the 2,013 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 JFK to ORD?
Republic Airways leads at 76.8% on time across 759 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 67.7%, a gap of 9 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 JFK to ORD?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 81.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 56.9%, 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 JFK to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 56.5% on time, compared with 84.0% in September. Across the year that is 28 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 JFK — the return legseparate record
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on JFK to ORD76.8%
- American Airlines on JFK to ORD73.0%
- JetBlue Airways on JFK to ORD67.7%
- Frontier Airlines on JFK to ORD51.4%
- JFK to LAX, a related route77.6%
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- JFK to SFO, a related route74.1%
- Republic Airways on-time record76.8%
- American Airlines on-time record73.0%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record67.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. JFK to ORD and ORD to JFK 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.