Route reliability record
ORD→CID
Chicago to Cedar Rapids
- Flights
- 2,715
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 196 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.6% 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 2,715 flights, of which Envoy Air flew 964 at 72.2% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 72.2% on time across 964 flights.
Key figures
On time
67.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,614 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.57%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
72.2% on time across 964 flights
These figures cover 2,715 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.1% 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 CID
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 72.2% of the time; United Airlines manages 63.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 456 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 354 | 72.4% | 68 min | 4.80% | C− |
| Envoy Air | 964 | 72.2% | 68 min | 2.49% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 813 | 64.0% | 104 min | 5.17% | D− |
| United Airlines | 456 | 63.4% | 95 min | 1.54% | D |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 127 | 60.3% | 75 min | 4.72% | D− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.2% 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.
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 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am64 flights78.3%
- 8am–11am522 flights74.4%
- 11am–2pm462 flights75.2%
- 2pm–5pm337 flights67.5%
- 5pm–8pm461 flights63.3%
- 8pm–5am869 flights61.3%
Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.3% on time, against 78.3% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 869 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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 52.8% on time, 28 points below September, the best at 80.9%. 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 301 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 64.1%. 11 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 43% of the 72,000 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
- 26%Carrier
- 17%Extreme weather
- 14%National Airspace System
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 72,050 reported delay minutes.
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 72,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 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 3.57%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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. 14.1% 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 196 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.1% on time across 2,715 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,715 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.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.57% 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. 2,614 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to CID questions
How often is ORD to CID delayed?
About one flight in three arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 32.2% of the 2,715 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to CID?
Envoy Air leads at 72.2% on time across 964 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 63.4%, a gap of 9 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 CID?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 78.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 61.3%, 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 July delays on ORD to CID?
July is the weakest month at 52.8% on time, compared with 80.9% in September. Across the year that is 28 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
- CID to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on-time record72.4%
- Envoy Air on-time record72.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record64.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. ORD to CID and CID to ORD are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.