Route reliability record
ORD→GRR
Chicago to Grand Rapids
- Flights
- 4,077
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 137 mi
- Carriers
- 6
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 4,077 ORD to GRR flights, of which Envoy Air flew 967 at 75.2% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to GRR: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.3% of the time and Thursday flights 72.3%, against 69.5% for the route overall.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 75.2% on time across 967 flights.
Key figures
On time
69.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,940 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.09%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
75.2% on time across 967 flights
These figures cover 4,077 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.0% 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 GRR
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 75.2% of the time; American Airlines manages 58.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 478 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 967 | 75.2% | 64 min | 3.93% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 881 | 71.8% | 86 min | 4.09% | C− |
| Republic Airways | 665 | 71.7% | 70 min | 3.46% | C− |
| United Airlines | 1,084 | 66.2% | 77 min | 1.01% | C |
| American Airlines | 478 | 58.7% | 87 min | 3.77% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 0.0% | 640 min | 0.00% | F+ |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 4.1% 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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Chicago to Grand Rapids
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MDW → GRRChicago to Grand Rapids | Southwest Airlines | 74.0% | 74.6% | 0.86% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. ORD → AZOChicago to Kalamazoo | Envoy Air | 73.3% | 76.6% | 4.33% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 3. ORD → GRRChicago to Grand Rapids | Envoy Air | 72.2% | 75.2% | 3.93% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 4. ORD → LANChicago to Lansing | Envoy Air | 70.8% | 72.8% | 2.79% | 2pm–5pm, Tue | — |
| 5. ORD → GRRChicago to Grand Rapids | Republic Airways | 69.2% | 71.7% | 3.46% | 11am–2pm, Thu | — |
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 26 points, against 17 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am277 flights85.3%
- 8am–11am749 flights76.2%
- 11am–2pm539 flights77.1%
- 2pm–5pm810 flights70.2%
- 5pm–8pm695 flights59.8%
- 8pm–5am1,007 flights62.0%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.8% on time, against 85.3% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 1,007 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to GRR 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 GRR, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 85.3% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 59.8%, a wide gap of 25.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am85.3%
- 8–11am76.2%
- 11am–2pm77.1%
- 2–5pm70.2%
- 5–8pm59.8%
- 8pm–5am62.0%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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 55.0% on time, against 80.5% 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. April was the busiest month here, with 443 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 72.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.0%, a spread of 5 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 93,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 93,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 93,404 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 85.3% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.09%, 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
13.0% 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 137 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 69.1% on time across 4,079 flights, within half 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 4,077 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 GRR after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.09% 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. 3,940 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to GRR questions
How often is ORD to GRR 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 30.5% of the 4,077 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 GRR?
Envoy Air leads at 75.2% on time across 967 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 58.7%, a gap of 17 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 GRR?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 59.8%, 26 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 GRR?
December is the weakest month at 55.0% on time, compared with 80.5% in September. Across the year that is 26 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
- GRR to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ORD to GRR75.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to GRR71.8%
- Republic Airways on ORD to GRR71.7%
- United Airlines on ORD to GRR66.2%
- American Airlines on ORD to GRR58.7%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- DTW to GRR, a related route75.1%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record75.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record71.8%
- Republic Airways on-time record71.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. ORD to GRR and GRR 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.