Route reliability record
ORD→CRW
Chicago to Charleston
- Flights
- 947
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 416 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 947 ORD to CRW flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes late.
Best time to fly ORD to CRW: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 77.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 67.2%, against 62.0% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 16 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 156 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 912 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.96%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
62.0% on time across 947 flights
These figures cover 947 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.4% 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 CRW
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 947 | 62.0% | 83 min | 2.96% | D |
Flight by flight
Flights on ORD to CRW
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.
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 28 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am80 flights70.0%
- 8am–11am193 flights77.9%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm345 flights61.9%
- 5pm–8pm323 flights49.7%
- 8pm–5am5 flights—
Scale runs 40% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 49.7% on time, against 77.9% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 345 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 39 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 41.0% on time, against 80.0% in October. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 105 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 67.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 52.7%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 29,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 10,000 of the 29,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 28,762 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 77.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.96%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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. 17.4% 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 416 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 64.8% on time across 947 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 947 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in CRW after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.96% 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. 912 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to CRW questions
How often is ORD to CRW 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 38.0% of the 947 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is ORD to CRW compared with the rest of the country?
62.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 16 points against it. That is worth a D on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ORD to CRW?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 77.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 49.7%, 28 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 CRW?
December is the weakest month at 41.0% on time, compared with 80.0% in October. Across the year that is 39 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
- CRW to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- ORD to LGA, a related route67.3%
- CLT to CRW, a related route75.6%
- ORD to BOS, a related route67.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record62.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ORD to CRW and CRW to ORD are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed ORD to CRW’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.