Route reliability record
ORD→COU
Chicago to Columbia
- Flights
- 2,054
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 315 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% 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 2,054 ORD to COU flights, of which Envoy Air flew 1,151 at 73.9% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to COU: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 75.9% of the time and Thursday flights 75.9%, against 70.8% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 65 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,967 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.75%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
73.9% on time across 1,151 flights
These figures cover 2,054 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.3% 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 COU
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 73.9% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 66.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 903 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,151 | 73.9% | 69 min | 2.69% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 903 | 66.7% | 103 min | 5.09% | C− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.1% 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.
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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 | 71.9% | 73.9% | 2.69% | 8am–11am, Tue | MQ 3745 18:50 |
| 2. ORD → COUChicago to Columbia | SkyWest Airlines | 63.3% | 66.7% | 5.09% | 11am–2pm, Thu | OO 5521 13:00 |
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 7 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am3 flights—
- 8am–11am497 flights75.9%
- 11am–2pm485 flights74.1%
- 2pm–5pm272 flights73.6%
- 5pm–8pm365 flights59.9%
- 8pm–5am432 flights68.2%
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 8am–11am 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 497 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to COU 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 COU, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 75.9% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 59.9%, a wide gap of 16.0 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am75.9%
- 11am–2pm74.1%
- 2–5pm73.6%
- 5–8pm59.9%
- 8pm–5am68.2%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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, Thursday is the strongest day at 75.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 67.6%, a spread of 8 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 49,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 11% 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 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 49,230 reported delay minutes.
46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 49,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one.
Cancellations run at 3.75%, against 1.89% 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
12.3% 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 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 73.7% on time across 2,054 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 2,054 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 3.75% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,967 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 29.2% of the 2,054 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 COU?
Envoy Air leads at 73.9% on time across 1,151 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 66.7%, a gap of 7 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 8am–11am 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 COU73.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to COU66.7%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- DFW to COU, a related route83.4%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record73.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record66.7%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.