Route reliability record
ORD→COU
Chicago to Columbia
- Flights
- 1,903
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 315 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten 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 1,903 ORD to COU flights, of which Envoy Air flew 1,124 at 73.6% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to COU: a 2pm–5pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 75.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 74.2%, against 70.4% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 72 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,827 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.52%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
73.6% on time across 1,124 flights
These figures cover 1,903 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.2% 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 COU
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 73.6% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 65.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 779 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,124 | 73.6% | 65 min | 2.58% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 779 | 65.8% | 100 min | 4.88% | C− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 4.9% 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 COU
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Chicago to Columbia
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 → COUChicago to Columbia | Envoy Air | 71.7% | 73.6% | 2.58% | 2pm–5pm, Tue | MQ 3745 18:50 |
| 2. ORD → COUChicago to Columbia | SkyWest Airlines | 62.6% | 65.8% | 4.88% | 11am–2pm, Thu | — |
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 16 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am3 flights—
- 8am–11am465 flights75.8%
- 11am–2pm440 flights73.7%
- 2pm–5pm212 flights75.9%
- 5pm–8pm385 flights59.9%
- 8pm–5am398 flights67.7%
Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.9% on time, against 75.9% for the 2pm–5pm 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 465 flights scheduled in it.
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.
December is the weak month at 51.5% on time, against 85.6% in May. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 205 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 67.0%. 7 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 48% of the 44,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
48% 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 44,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 44,074 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.52%, 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. 12.2% 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.
At 315 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 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 72.7% on time across 1,903 flights, within 2 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 1,903 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 COU after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.52% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 2pm–5pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,827 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to COU questions
How often is ORD to COU delayed?
Roughly 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 29.6% of the 1,903 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to COU?
Envoy Air leads at 73.6% on time across 1,124 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 65.8%, a gap of 8 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 COU?
The 2pm–5pm departure window is the strongest at 75.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 59.9%, 16 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 COU?
December is the weakest month at 51.5% on time, compared with 85.6% in May. 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
- COU to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ORD to COU73.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to COU65.8%
- ORD to LGA, a related route67.3%
- DFW to COU, a related route81.6%
- ORD to BOS, a related route67.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record73.6%
- 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 COU and COU 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.