Route reliability record
ORD→CID
Chicago to Cedar Rapids
- Flights
- 2,793
- Period
- September 2025 to August 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 1.9% 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 2,793 ORD to CID flights, of which Envoy Air flew 838 at 73.7% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to CID: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 78.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 73.7%, against 67.1% for the route overall.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 73.7% on time across 838 flights.
Key figures
On time
67.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,691 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.58%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
73.7% on time across 838 flights
These figures cover 2,793 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.9% 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 CID
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 73.7% of the time; United Airlines manages 61.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 542 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 838 | 73.7% | 73 min | 2.63% | C |
| Republic Airways | 372 | 72.6% | 70 min | 4.84% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 851 | 64.7% | 99 min | 5.05% | D− |
| United Airlines | 542 | 61.2% | 91 min | 1.29% | D |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 189 | 55.0% | 113 min | 4.76% | D− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.0% 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 CID
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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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Chicago to Cedar Rapids
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 → CIDChicago to Cedar Rapids | Envoy Air | 71.8% | 73.7% | 2.63% | 11am–2pm, Tue | — |
| 2. ORD → CIDChicago to Cedar Rapids | Republic Airways | 69.1% | 72.6% | 4.84% | 11am–2pm, Sat | — |
| 3. ORD → CIDChicago to Cedar Rapids | SkyWest Airlines | 61.4% | 64.7% | 5.05% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
| 4. ORD → CIDChicago to Cedar Rapids | United Airlines | 60.4% | 61.2% | 1.29% | 8am–11am, Mon | UA 1923 20:20 |
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 18 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am64 flights78.3%
- 8am–11am542 flights74.8%
- 11am–2pm480 flights75.2%
- 2pm–5pm360 flights66.1%
- 5pm–8pm482 flights62.3%
- 8pm–5am865 flights59.9%
Scale runs 50% to 85%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 59.9% 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 865 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to CID 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 CID, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 78.3% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 59.9%, a wide gap of 18.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am78.3%
- 8–11am74.8%
- 11am–2pm75.2%
- 2–5pm66.1%
- 5–8pm62.3%
- 8pm–5am59.9%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
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.
December is the weak month at 54.2% on time, against 80.9% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. April was the busiest month here, with 301 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 73.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 63.6%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 78,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%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 2.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 78,393 reported delay minutes.
44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 78,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations run at 3.58%, against 1.89% 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
14.9% 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.
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 71.6% on time across 2,792 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.
The sample behind these figures is 2,793 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 CID after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.58% 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. 2,691 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 arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 32.9% of the 2,793 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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 73.7% on time across 838 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 61.2%, a gap of 13 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 59.9%, 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 December delays on ORD to CID?
December is the weakest month at 54.2% on time, compared with 80.9% 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
- CID to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ORD to CID73.7%
- Republic Airways on ORD to CID72.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to CID64.7%
- United Airlines on ORD to CID61.2%
- American Airlines on ORD to CID55.0%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- DFW to CID, a related route74.9%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record73.7%
- Republic Airways on-time record72.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record64.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.
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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.