Route reliability record
ORD→CVG
Chicago to Cincinnati
- Flights
- 4,690
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 264 mi
- Carriers
- 6
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.3% 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 4,690 ORD to CVG flights, of which Republic Airways flew 1,267 at 78.3% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to CVG: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.5% of the time and Saturday flights 77.4%, against 72.1% for the route overall.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 78.3% on time across 1,267 flights.
Key figures
On time
72.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,535 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.26%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Republic
78.3% on time across 1,267 flights
These figures cover 4,690 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.7% 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 CVG
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 78.3% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 64.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 984 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,267 | 78.3% | 68 min | 3.71% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 1,357 | 72.4% | 78 min | 2.28% | C |
| United Airlines | 998 | 71.7% | 68 min | 1.90% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 37 | 68.6% | 125 min | 5.41% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 984 | 64.8% | 89 min | 5.49% | D− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 47 | 57.4% | 105 min | 0.00% | D+ |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.5% 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 CVG
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 Cincinnati
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 → CVGChicago to Cincinnati | Republic Airways | 75.4% | 78.3% | 3.71% | 5am–8am, Thu | YX 3498 07:10 |
| 2. ORD → CVGChicago to Cincinnati | Envoy Air | 70.7% | 72.4% | 2.28% | 5am–8am, Sat | MQ 3690 19:29 |
| 3. ORD → CVGChicago to Cincinnati | United Airlines | 70.3% | 71.7% | 1.90% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 4. ORD → CVGChicago to Cincinnati | SkyWest Airlines | 61.2% | 64.8% | 5.49% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 23 points, against 14 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am530 flights86.5%
- 8am–11am743 flights76.0%
- 11am–2pm738 flights73.4%
- 2pm–5pm975 flights69.6%
- 5pm–8pm1,049 flights68.4%
- 8pm–5am655 flights63.5%
Scale runs 55% to 90%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.5% on time, against 86.5% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 1,049 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to CVG 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 CVG, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 86.5% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 63.5%, a wide gap of 23.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am86.5%
- 8–11am76.0%
- 11am–2pm73.4%
- 2–5pm69.6%
- 5–8pm68.4%
- 8pm–5am63.5%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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 59.5% on time, against 80.7% 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. May was the busiest month here, with 459 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 77.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.4%, a spread of 11 points.
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 98,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 12%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 97,781 reported delay minutes.
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 98,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations run at 3.26%, 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
11.7% 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 264 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 runs 70.8% on time across 4,673 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 4,690 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 CVG after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.26% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 4,535 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to CVG questions
How often is ORD to CVG delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 27.9% of the 4,690 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to CVG?
Republic Airways leads at 78.3% on time across 1,267 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 64.8%, a gap of 14 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 CVG?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 63.5%, 23 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 CVG?
December is the weakest month at 59.5% on time, compared with 80.7% in May. Across the year that is 21 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
- CVG to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on ORD to CVG78.3%
- Envoy Air on ORD to CVG72.4%
- United Airlines on ORD to CVG71.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to CVG64.8%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- ATL to CVG, a related route81.4%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- Republic Airways on-time record78.3%
- Envoy Air on-time record72.4%
- United Airlines on-time record71.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ORD to CVG and CVG 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.