Route reliability record
ORD→DAY
Chicago to Dayton
- Flights
- 1,744
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 240 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.0% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% 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 1,744 ORD to DAY flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 469 at 60.7% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to DAY: a 2pm–5pm departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 67.6% of the time and Saturday flights 72.9%, against 65.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 123 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,656 completed flights
Avg delay
119 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.05%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
60.7% on time across 469 flights
These figures cover 1,744 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.6% 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 DAY
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 69 | 80.9% | 80 min | 1.45% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 357 | 76.9% | 65 min | 3.08% | B− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 103 | 70.8% | 60 min | 6.80% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 469 | 60.7% | 82 min | 6.18% | D− |
| PSA Airlines | 746 | 60.2% | 166 min | 5.36% | D− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 6.2% 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.
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 | PSA Airlines | 57.0% | 60.2% | 5.36% | 2pm–5pm, Sat | — |
| 2. ORD → DAYChicago to Dayton | SkyWest Airlines | 56.9% | 60.7% | 6.18% | 8am–11am, 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 is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 1,744 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am416 flights67.2%
- 11am–2pm245 flights65.7%
- 2pm–5pm444 flights67.6%
- 5pm–8pm363 flights60.2%
- 8pm–5am276 flights64.8%
Scale runs 50% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 67.6% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 60.2%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 444 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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.
July is the worst month at 54.5% on time, 20 points below September, the best at 74.6%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. November was the busiest month here, with 230 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 72.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.8%. 12 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 58% of the 69,000 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.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%Carrier
- 13%Extreme weather
- 11%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 13% 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 2.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 68,549 reported delay minutes.
58% 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 69,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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.
Cancellations run at 5.05%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 17.6% 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 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 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.9% on time across 1,741 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 1,744 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 5.05% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; 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. 1,656 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 34.7% of the 1,744 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to DAY?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 60.7% on time across 469 flights. PSA Airlines is at the other end on 60.2%, a gap of half a point. 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 2pm–5pm departure window is the strongest at 67.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 60.2%, 7 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 July delays on ORD to DAY?
July is the weakest month at 54.5% on time, compared with 74.6% in September. Across the year that is 20 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 DAY76.9%
- Republic Airways on ORD to DAY70.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to DAY60.7%
- PSA Airlines on ORD to DAY60.2%
- ORD to LGA, a related route67.3%
- ATL to DAY, a related route85.2%
- ORD to BOS, a related route67.6%
- United Airlines on-time record80.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record76.9%
- Republic Airways on-time record70.8%
- 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.
Embed ORD to DAY’s on-time badge on your site
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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.