Route reliability record
ORD→HSV
Chicago to Huntsville
- Flights
- 1,018
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 510 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.6% 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 1,018 ORD to HSV flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Best time to fly ORD to HSV: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 76.0% of the time and Thursday flights 71.4%, against 65.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 120 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 978 completed flights
Avg delay
100 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.63%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
65.4% on time across 1,002 flights
These figures cover 1,018 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.9% 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 HSV
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 | 1,002 | 65.4% | 101 min | 3.69% | C− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 16 | 62.5% | 76 min | 0.00% | D+ |
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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 21 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am327 flights76.0%
- 11am–2pm110 flights61.7%
- 2pm–5pm108 flights70.9%
- 5pm–8pm160 flights55.3%
- 8pm–5am313 flights58.6%
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 55.3% on time, against 76.0% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 327 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to HSV 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 HSV, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 76.0% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 55.3%, a wide gap of 20.7 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am76.0%
- 11am–2pm61.7%
- 2–5pm70.9%
- 5–8pm55.3%
- 8pm–5am58.6%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 40 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 47.2% on time, against 86.7% 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. November was the busiest month here, with 144 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 71.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 59.3%, a spread of 12 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 34,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Carrier
- 23%Extreme weather
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 23% 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 3.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 33,975 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 13,000 of the 34,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.63%, against 1.89% 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
16.9% 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.
The 510 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 69.5% on time across 1,018 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,018 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 HSV after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.63% 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. 978 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to HSV questions
How often is ORD to HSV 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 1,018 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is ORD to HSV compared with the rest of the country?
65.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 12 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ORD to HSV?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 76.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 55.3%, 21 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 HSV?
December is the weakest month at 47.2% on time, compared with 86.7% in May. Across the year that is 40 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
- HSV to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- ATL to HSV, a related route83.7%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record65.4%
- Envoy Air on-time record62.5%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. ORD to HSV and HSV 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.