Route reliability record
ORD→DAY
Chicago to Dayton
- Flights
- 1,815
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 240 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three 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 1,815 ORD to DAY flights, of which Envoy Air flew 467 at 76.1% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to DAY: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 70.6% of the time and Saturday flights 69.1%, against 66.2% for the route overall.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 76.1% on time across 467 flights.
Key figures
On time
66.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,728 completed flights
Avg delay
107 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.79%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
76.1% on time across 467 flights
These figures cover 1,815 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.7% 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 DAY
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 76.1% of the time; PSA Airlines manages 60.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 562 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 69 | 80.9% | 80 min | 1.45% | B |
| Envoy Air | 467 | 76.1% | 68 min | 3.21% | B− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 95 | 72.7% | 65 min | 7.37% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 622 | 61.1% | 81 min | 5.31% | D− |
| PSA Airlines | 562 | 60.5% | 162 min | 5.52% | D− |
PSA 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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Chicago to Dayton
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 → DAYChicago to Dayton | Envoy Air | 73.7% | 76.1% | 3.21% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 2. ORD → DAYChicago to Dayton | SkyWest Airlines | 57.9% | 61.1% | 5.31% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 3. ORD → DAYChicago to Dayton | PSA Airlines | 57.2% | 60.5% | 5.52% | 2pm–5pm, Sat | — |
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 12 points, against 16 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am411 flights70.6%
- 11am–2pm316 flights67.2%
- 2pm–5pm450 flights69.0%
- 5pm–8pm346 flights58.1%
- 8pm–5am292 flights64.1%
Scale runs 50% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.1% on time, against 70.6% 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 450 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to DAY 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 DAY, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 70.6% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 58.1%, a wide gap of 12.5 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am70.6%
- 11am–2pm67.2%
- 2–5pm69.0%
- 5–8pm58.1%
- 8pm–5am64.1%
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 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.
January is the weak month at 56.2% on time, against 74.6% in September. 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. November was the busiest month here, with 230 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 69.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.1%, a spread of 8 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 62,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
55% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 62,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 62,481 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 70.6% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.79%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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
16.7% 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 240 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.7% on time across 1,810 flights, 7 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,815 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 DAY after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.79% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; 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. 1,728 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to DAY questions
How often is ORD to DAY delayed?
About 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 33.8% of the 1,815 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to DAY?
Envoy Air leads at 76.1% on time across 467 flights. PSA Airlines is at the other end on 60.5%, a gap of 16 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 DAY?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 70.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 58.1%, 12 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 January delays on ORD to DAY?
January is the weakest month at 56.2% on time, compared with 74.6% in September. 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.
Related
Where to go next
- DAY to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ORD to DAY76.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to DAY61.1%
- PSA Airlines on ORD to DAY60.5%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- ATL to DAY, a related route84.9%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- United Airlines on-time record80.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record76.1%
- Republic Airways on-time record72.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ORD to DAY and DAY 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.