Route reliability record
ORD→BTV
Chicago to Burlington
- Flights
- 1,245
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 763 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,245 ORD to BTV flights, of which United Airlines flew 683 at 72.6% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to BTV: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 74.4%, against 69.0% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 86 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,214 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.93%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
72.6% on time across 683 flights
These figures cover 1,245 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.2% 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 BTV
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 72.6% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 62.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 481 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 63 | 82.5% | 36 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 683 | 72.6% | 62 min | 0.73% | C+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 18 | 70.6% | 49 min | 5.56% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 481 | 62.0% | 92 min | 3.74% | D− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 3.7% 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.
Flight by flight
Flights on ORD to BTV
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Chicago to Burlington
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ORD → BTVChicago to Burlington | United Airlines | 72.1% | 72.6% | 0.73% | 11am–2pm, Tue | UA 786 11:17 |
| 2. ORD → BTVChicago to Burlington | SkyWest Airlines | 59.7% | 62.0% | 3.74% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
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 29 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am39 flights89.5%
- 8am–11am48 flights77.1%
- 11am–2pm393 flights78.1%
- 2pm–5pm212 flights66.7%
- 5pm–8pm470 flights61.0%
- 8pm–5am83 flights62.2%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 61.0% on time, against 89.5% for the 5am–8am 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 470 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 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.
July is the worst month at 53.0% on time, 27 points below September, the best at 79.5%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 163 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.8%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 28,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Carrier
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%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 28,219 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 10,000 of the 28,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.93% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.56%.
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. 12.2% 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.
The 763 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 66.2% on time across 1,245 flights, within 3 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 1,245 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 BTV after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 79.5% on time and July 53.0%, a swing of 27 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,214 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to BTV questions
How often is ORD to BTV delayed?
About 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 31.0% of the 1,245 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to BTV?
United Airlines leads at 72.6% on time across 683 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 62.0%, a gap of 11 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 BTV?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 61.0%, 29 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 July delays on ORD to BTV?
July is the weakest month at 53.0% on time, compared with 79.5% in September. Across the year that is 27 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
- BTV to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- United Airlines on ORD to BTV72.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to BTV62.0%
- ORD to LGA, a related route67.3%
- DCA to BTV, a related route70.0%
- ORD to BOS, a related route67.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record82.5%
- United Airlines on-time record72.6%
- Republic Airways on-time record70.6%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. ORD to BTV and BTV to ORD are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed ORD to BTV’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.