Route reliability record
ORD→ATW
Chicago to Appleton
- Flights
- 2,436
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 160 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.8% 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 2,436 ORD to ATW flights, of which Envoy Air flew 1,185 at 74.0% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to ATW: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 76.9% of the time and Saturday flights 76.6%, against 70.1% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 72 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,314 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.80%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
74.0% on time across 1,185 flights
These figures cover 2,436 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 ORD to ATW
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 74.0% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 66.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,251 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,185 | 74.0% | 65 min | 3.63% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,251 | 66.2% | 94 min | 5.92% | C− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.9% 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 Chicago to Appleton
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. 2 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ORD → GRBChicago to Green Bay | Envoy Air | 72.9% | 75.7% | 3.74% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 2. ORD → ATWChicago to Appleton | Envoy Air | 71.3% | 74.0% | 3.63% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 3. ORD → ATWChicago to Appleton | SkyWest Airlines | 62.3% | 66.2% | 5.92% | 11am–2pm, Sat | — |
| 4. ORD → GRBChicago to Green Bay | SkyWest Airlines | 59.3% | 62.4% | 4.94% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
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 19 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am54 flights70.6%
- 8am–11am580 flights76.9%
- 11am–2pm319 flights76.1%
- 2pm–5pm671 flights65.0%
- 5pm–8pm304 flights57.7%
- 8pm–5am508 flights72.1%
Scale runs 50% to 80%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.7% on time, against 76.9% 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 671 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to ATW 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 ORD to ATW, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 76.9% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 57.7%, a wide gap of 19.2 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am70.6%
- 8–11am76.9%
- 11am–2pm76.1%
- 2–5pm65.0%
- 5–8pm57.7%
- 8pm–5am72.1%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 35 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 51.0% on time, against 86.0% 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. April was the busiest month here, with 330 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 76.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.6%, a spread of 10 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 57,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 13%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 13% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 56,554 reported delay minutes.
37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 57,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations run at 4.80%, against 1.89% 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
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.
At 160 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 70.9% on time across 2,434 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 2,436 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 ATW after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.80% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 2,314 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to ATW questions
How often is ORD to ATW 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 29.9% of the 2,436 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to ATW?
Envoy Air leads at 74.0% on time across 1,185 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 66.2%, a gap of 8 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 ATW?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 76.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 57.7%, 19 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 ATW?
December is the weakest month at 51.0% on time, compared with 86.0% in September. Across the year that is 35 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
- ATW to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ORD to ATW74.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to ATW66.2%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- DTW to ATW, a related route75.1%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record74.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record66.2%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ORD to ATW and ATW to ORD are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed ORD to ATW’s on-time badge on your site
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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.