Route reliability record
ORD→CHO
Chicago to Charlottesville
- Flights
- 1,236
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 566 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.0% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three 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 1,236 ORD to CHO flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
Best time to fly ORD to CHO: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Monday. Flights in that window arrived on time 75.6% of the time and Monday flights 67.5%, against 65.9% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 114 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,175 completed flights
Avg delay
90 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.96%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
65.9% on time across 1,236 flights
These figures cover 1,236 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.9% 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 CHO
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,236 | 65.9% | 90 min | 3.96% | C− |
Flight by flight
Flights on ORD to CHO
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.
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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 17 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am275 flights75.6%
- 8am–11am120 flights66.7%
- 11am–2pm52 flights63.5%
- 2pm–5pm353 flights67.1%
- 5pm–8pm358 flights58.6%
- 8pm–5am78 flights58.2%
Scale runs 50% to 80%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 58.2% on time, against 75.6% 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 358 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to CHO 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 CHO, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 75.6% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 58.2%, a wide gap of 17.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am75.6%
- 8–11am66.7%
- 11am–2pm63.5%
- 2–5pm67.1%
- 5–8pm58.6%
- 8pm–5am58.2%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 34 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.
October is the best month on the calendar at 83.8% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. April was the busiest month here, with 146 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 67.5% on time and Saturday the weakest at 62.3%, a spread of 5 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 36,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 36,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 35,905 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 13,000 of the 36,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.96%, against 1.89% 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
15.9% 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.
The 566 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 68.9% on time across 1,236 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,236 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 CHO after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.96% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,175 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to CHO questions
How often is ORD to CHO 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 34.1% of the 1,236 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is ORD to CHO compared with the rest of the country?
65.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 11 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 CHO?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 75.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 58.2%, 17 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 March delays on ORD to CHO?
March is the weakest month at 49.5% on time, compared with 83.8% in October. Across the year that is 34 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
- CHO to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- ORD to LAX, a related route72.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record65.9%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ORD to CHO and CHO 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.