Route reliability record
ORD→ALB
Chicago to Albany
- Flights
- 2,304
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 723 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,304 flights, of which Envoy Air flew 756 at 79.1% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 79.1% on time across 756 flights.
Key figures
On time
75.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,246 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.47%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
79.1% on time across 756 flights
These figures cover 2,304 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.9% 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
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to ALB
The three carriers here are closely matched: 5 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 756 | 79.1% | 54 min | 2.38% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 205 | 74.4% | 84 min | 2.44% | C |
| Republic Airways | 587 | 74.2% | 71 min | 4.09% | C− |
| United Airlines | 756 | 73.7% | 67 min | 1.32% | C |
Republic Airways cancels 4.1% 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
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 27 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am137 flights92.7%
- 8am–11am465 flights82.4%
- 11am–2pm402 flights76.3%
- 2pm–5pm523 flights76.2%
- 5pm–8pm408 flights65.4%
- 8pm–5am369 flights70.3%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.7% of the time, against 65.4% for the evening window. That is 27 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 523 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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 63.6% on time, against 84.3% in May. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 260 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 79.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.2%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 36,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
50% 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 36,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 35,910 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 92.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.47% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.04%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.9% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route are the about an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 723 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 76.6% on time across 2,303 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 2,304 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.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 84.3% on time and December 63.6%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,246 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to ALB questions
How often is ORD to ALB delayed?
About one flight in four arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 24.3% of the 2,304 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to ALB?
Envoy Air leads at 79.1% on time across 756 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 73.7%, a gap of 5 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 ORD to ALB?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 65.4%, 27 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 ORD to ALB?
December is the weakest month at 63.6% on time, compared with 84.3% in May. Across the year that is 21 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
- ALB to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on-time record79.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record74.4%
- Republic Airways on-time record74.2%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. ORD to ALB and ALB to ORD are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.