Route reliability record
ORD→AZO
Chicago to Kalamazoo
- Flights
- 990
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 122 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.2% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four 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 990 ORD to AZO flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly ORD to AZO: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 81.3%, against 74.4% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 945 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.24%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
75.3% on time across 889 flights
These figures cover 990 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.0% 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 AZO
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 889 | 75.3% | 61 min | 4.16% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 101 | 66.3% | 97 min | 4.95% | C− |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Chicago to Kalamazoo
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. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MDW → GRRChicago to Grand Rapids | Southwest Airlines | 74.6% | 75.2% | 0.86% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. ORD → GRRChicago to Grand Rapids | Envoy Air | 73.1% | 76.1% | 3.88% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 3. ORD → GRRChicago to Grand Rapids | Republic Airways | 72.2% | 74.5% | 3.03% | 2pm–5pm, Thu | — |
| 4. ORD → AZOChicago to Kalamazoo | Envoy Air | 72.2% | 75.3% | 4.16% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 5. ORD → GRRChicago to Grand Rapids | SkyWest Airlines | 68.4% | 70.8% | 3.46% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
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 23 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am279 flights85.7%
- 11am–2pm106 flights72.3%
- 2pm–5pm211 flights77.2%
- 5pm–8pm63 flights62.3%
- 8pm–5am331 flights66.0%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.3% on time, against 85.7% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 331 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 31 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.
June is the worst month at 55.9% on time, 31 points below September, the best at 87.1%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. March was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.7%. 13 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 16,000 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
- 18%National Airspace System
- 17%Extreme weather
- 15%Carrier
Extreme weather accounts for 17% 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 2.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 15,969 reported delay minutes.
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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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.
Cancellations run at 4.24%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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. 9.0% 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 122 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.7% on time across 990 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 990 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in AZO after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.24% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 945 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to AZO questions
How often is ORD to AZO delayed?
About 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 25.6% of the 990 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is ORD to AZO compared with the rest of the country?
74.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ORD to AZO?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 85.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 62.3%, 23 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 June delays on ORD to AZO?
June is the weakest month at 55.9% on time, compared with 87.1% in September. Across the year that is 31 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
- AZO to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ORD to AZO75.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to AZO66.3%
- ORD to LGA, a related route67.3%
- DTW to AZO, a related route74.9%
- ORD to BOS, a related route67.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record75.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record66.3%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ORD to AZO and AZO to ORD 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.