Route reliability record
ORD→CHO
Chicago to Charlottesville
- Flights
- 1,183
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 566 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.1% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% 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 1,183 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 75.7% of the time and Monday flights 67.3%, against 65.8% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 118 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,122 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.14%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
65.8% on time across 1,183 flights
These figures cover 1,183 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.2% 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 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 | 1,183 | 65.8% | 91 min | 4.14% | 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.
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 18 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–8am223 flights75.7%
- 8am–11am120 flights66.7%
- 11am–2pm52 flights63.5%
- 2pm–5pm353 flights68.1%
- 5pm–8pm357 flights58.6%
- 8pm–5am78 flights58.2%
Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 58.2% on time, against 75.7% 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 357 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 36 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 47.5% on time, 36 points below October, the best at 83.8%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 146 flights.
The day of the week is close to irrelevant here: 3 points separates the best day from the worst. Weekly demand peaks are not what drives the delays on this operation.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 35,000 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
43% 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 35,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 35,038 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 13,000 of the 35,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 4.14%, 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. 16.2% 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 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. 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 68.3% on time across 1,183 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 1,183 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 4.14% 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. 1,122 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 34.2% of the 1,183 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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?
65.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 12 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 75.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 58.2%, 18 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 CHO?
July is the weakest month at 47.5% on time, compared with 83.8% in October. Across the year that is 36 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 route67.3%
- ORD to BOS, a related route67.6%
- ORD to DCA, a related route69.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record65.8%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.