Route reliability record

ORD→CLT

Chicago to Charlotte

Flights: 4,306
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 599 mi
Carriers: 6

This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 4,306 flights, of which Republic Airways flew 377 at 79.7% on time.

Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 79.7% on time across 377 flights.

On time

73.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,203 completed flights

Avg delay

83 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.30%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

Republic

79.7% on time across 377 flights

These figures cover 4,306 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% 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 CLT

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 79.7% of the time; United Airlines manages 70.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 612 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to CLT
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	1	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
Republic Airways	377	79.7%	78 min	2.12%	B
American Airlines	2,999	74.6%	85 min	2.43%	C
United Airlines	612	70.6%	76 min	0.98%	C+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	157	67.1%	121 min	3.18%	C−
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	160	53.6%	52 min	4.38%	F−

Republic leads United by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh 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 25 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am1,126 flights85.7%
8am–11am736 flights79.1%
11am–2pm420 flights74.6%
2pm–5pm773 flights68.7%
5pm–8pm990 flights60.8%
8pm–5am261 flights64.8%

Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.8% on time, against 85.7% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 1,126 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 18 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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.October best, March worst

July is the worst month at 64.5% on time, 18 points below October, the best at 82.9%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 417 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.8%. 8 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 54% of the 92,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
54%
Carrier
27%
National Airspace System
14%
Extreme weather
4%

54% 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 92,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 92,083 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 85.7% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 2.30% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.09%.

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. 10.5% 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 599 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 72.2% on time across 4,300 flights, within about a point 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 4,306 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 calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 82.9% on time and July 64.5%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 4,203 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

ORD to CLT questions

How often is ORD to CLT delayed?

About one flight in four arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 26.5% of the 4,306 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 CLT?

Republic Airways leads at 79.7% on time across 377 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 70.6%, 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 CLT?

The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 60.8%, 25 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 CLT?

July is the weakest month at 64.5% on time, compared with 82.9% in October. Across the year that is 18 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

Direction matters. ORD to CLT and CLT 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.

Key figures