Route reliability record
JFK→ORD
New York to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,136
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 740 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 6.0% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% 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 2,136 JFK to ORD flights, of which Republic Airways flew 830 at 76.3% on time.
Best time to fly JFK to ORD: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 77.3%, against 70.4% for the route overall.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 76.3% on time across 830 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,992 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.04%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Republic
76.3% on time across 830 flights
These figures cover 2,136 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.8% 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 JFK to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 76.3% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 64.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 634 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 830 | 76.3% | 77 min | 5.78% | B− |
| American Airlines | 542 | 73.1% | 91 min | 5.17% | C− |
| JetBlue Airways | 634 | 64.0% | 85 min | 7.57% | D− |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 14 | 61.5% | 266 min | 0.00% | D+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 116 | 51.4% | 101 min | 4.31% | F− |
JetBlue Airways cancels 7.6% 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.
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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 | 74.9% | 78.1% | 4.10% | 5am–8am, Sat | MQ 3496 07:10 |
| 2. EWR → ORDNewark to Chicago | American Airlines | 73.1% | 76.8% | 4.76% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. JFK → ORDNew York to Chicago | Republic Airways | 71.9% | 76.3% | 5.78% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 4. JFK → ORDNew York to Chicago | American Airlines | 69.3% | 73.1% | 5.17% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 5. EWR → ORDNewark to Chicago | United Airlines | 68.3% | 70.3% | 2.83% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 1875 11:25 |
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 26 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am190 flights75.1%
- 8am–11am492 flights81.7%
- 11am–2pm356 flights77.8%
- 2pm–5pm498 flights64.0%
- 5pm–8pm421 flights61.3%
- 8pm–5am179 flights55.7%
Scale runs 45% to 85%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 55.7% on time, against 81.7% 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 498 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter JFK 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 JFK to ORD, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 81.7% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 55.7%, a wide gap of 26.0 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am75.1%
- 8–11am81.7%
- 11am–2pm77.8%
- 2–5pm64.0%
- 5–8pm61.3%
- 8pm–5am55.7%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
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. July was the busiest month here, with 217 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.5%, a spread of 13 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 51,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%National Airspace System
- 20%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 51,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 to one. The split is drawn from 51,254 reported delay minutes.
35% 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 18,000 minutes out of 51,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 6.04%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in fifteen 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
13.8% 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 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.
The return leg runs 72.5% on time across 2,135 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 2,136 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 6.04% 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. 1,992 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 three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 29.6% of the 2,136 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 JFK to ORD?
Republic Airways leads at 76.3% on time across 830 flights. JetBlue Airways is at the other end on 64.0%, a gap of 12 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 81.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 55.7%, 26 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 ORD76.3%
- American Airlines on JFK to ORD73.1%
- JetBlue Airways on JFK to ORD64.0%
- Frontier Airlines on JFK to ORD51.4%
- JFK to LAX, a related route75.4%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- JFK to SFO, a related route71.4%
- Republic Airways on-time record76.3%
- American Airlines on-time record73.1%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record64.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.