Carrier route record

OHMSN→ORD

PSA Airlines · Madison to Chicago

Flights: 108
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 3%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.

PSA on MSN to ORD earns an F−, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 33.7% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 44 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. Late arrivals average about 2.8 hours. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 108 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 1,067 at 78.1% on time.

Envoy Air is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 78.1% on time across 1,067 flights.

On time

33.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 95 completed flights

Avg delay

165 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

12.04%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

71.9%

Every carrier on MSN to ORD, 4,030 flights

These figures cover 108 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 37.9% 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

PSA against every carrier on MSN to ORD

PSA flew 108 of the 4,030 flights on MSN to ORD, about 3% of it. Its 33.7% on time is 38 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 78.1% to PSA at 33.7%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 78.1% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 66.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,268 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on MSN to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air	1,067	78.1%	72 min	3.84%	B−
Republic Airways	650	76.0%	74 min	2.46%	B
United Airlines	937	72.6%	71 min	2.35%	C
SkyWest Airlines	1,268	66.8%	109 min	4.97%	C−
PSA Airlines (this page)thin sample	108	33.7%	165 min	12.04%	F−

SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.0% 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.

Departure window

When PSA runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 22 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm71 flights41.3%
5pm–8pm36 flights18.8%
8pm–5am1 flights—

Scale runs 10% to 45%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 18.8% on time, against 41.3% for the 2pm–5pm 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 71 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

PSA on MSN to ORD through the year

Oct–Dec 202572 flights41.3%
Jan–Mar 202636 flights18.8%

Scale runs 10% to 45%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 33.7% on time across 108 flights.

Split by quarter, PSA on MSN to ORD logged 72 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 36 flights in Jan–Mar 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 33.7% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why PSA runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 71% of the 10,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Late-arriving aircraft
71%
National Airspace System
16%
Carrier
13%
Extreme weather
0%
Security
0%

71% 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 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 71 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 10,420 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 12.04%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in eight 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 costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 37.9% 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.

At 108 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 49.5% on time across 108 flights, 16 points above 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 16 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 108 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.

What to do with this

Booking PSA on MSN to ORD

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 12.04% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 2.8 hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 2pm–5pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 95 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures