Route reliability record
ORD→JFK
Chicago to New York
- Flights
- 2,012
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 740 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.7% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four 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 2,012 ORD to JFK flights, of which JetBlue Airways flew 571 at 81.8% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to JFK: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.2% of the time and Saturday flights 78.2%, against 73.4% for the route overall.
JetBlue Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 81.8% on time across 571 flights.
Key figures
On time
73.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,934 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.73%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
JetBlue
81.8% on time across 571 flights
These figures cover 2,012 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.0% 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 JFK
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. JetBlue Airways arrives on time 81.8% of the time; American Airlines manages 61.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 551 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 14 | 92.3% | 221 min | 7.14% | A− |
| JetBlue Airways | 571 | 81.8% | 103 min | 4.38% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 759 | 77.1% | 77 min | 2.11% | B |
| American Airlines | 551 | 61.7% | 99 min | 5.08% | D− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 117 | 59.8% | 100 min | 4.27% | D− |
American Airlines cancels 5.1% 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Chicago to New York
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. ORD → JFKChicago to New York | JetBlue Airways | 78.2% | 81.8% | 4.38% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
| 2. ORD → JFKChicago to New York | Republic Airways | 75.5% | 77.1% | 2.11% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. ORD → EWRChicago to Newark | Envoy Air | 75.2% | 79.3% | 5.18% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 4. ORD → HPNChicago to White Plains | Envoy Air | 74.5% | 77.3% | 3.60% | 8am–11am, Sat | MQ 3812 08:10 |
| 5. ORD → EWRChicago to Newark | United Airlines | 69.6% | 71.3% | 2.37% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 563 07:10 |
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 40 points, against 20 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am605 flights85.2%
- 8am–11am476 flights78.4%
- 11am–2pm507 flights66.9%
- 2pm–5pm343 flights61.5%
- 5pm–8pm81 flights44.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 35% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 44.9% on time, against 85.2% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 605 flights scheduled in it.
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 61.5% on time, against 87.4% 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. June was the busiest month here, with 202 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 78.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.8%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 48,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
41% 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 48,000 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. The split is drawn from 47,699 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 85.2% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.73%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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. 12.0% 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.
The 740 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 71.5% on time across 2,013 flights, within 2 points 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 2,012 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 JFK after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.73% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 1,934 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to JFK questions
How often is ORD to JFK delayed?
About 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 26.6% of the 2,012 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to JFK?
JetBlue Airways leads at 81.8% on time across 571 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 61.7%, a gap of 20 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 JFK?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 44.9%, 40 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 JFK?
December is the weakest month at 61.5% on time, compared with 87.4% in May. 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
- JFK to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- JetBlue Airways on ORD to JFK81.8%
- Republic Airways on ORD to JFK77.1%
- American Airlines on ORD to JFK61.7%
- Frontier Airlines on ORD to JFK59.8%
- ORD to LGA, a related route67.3%
- LAX to JFK, a related route79.1%
- ORD to BOS, a related route67.6%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record92.3%
- JetBlue Airways on-time record81.8%
- Republic Airways on-time record77.1%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. ORD to JFK and JFK 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.