Route reliability record

ORD→OKC

Chicago to Oklahoma City

Flights: 2,594
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 693 mi
Carriers: 4

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 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 2,594 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 83 extra late arrivals.

On time

69.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,508 completed flights

Avg delay

84 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.93%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

SkyWest

68.0% on time across 2,356 flights

These figures cover 2,594 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.3% 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 OKC

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.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to OKC
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlinesthin sample	4	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
Republic Airwaysthin sample	211	83.3%	74 min	0.95%	B+
Envoy Airthin sample	23	72.7%	82 min	4.35%	C−
SkyWest Airlines	2,356	68.0%	85 min	3.10%	C−

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 16 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am89 flights77.5%
8am–11am611 flights75.0%
11am–2pm396 flights76.4%
2pm–5pm713 flights66.6%
5pm–8pm678 flights62.0%
8pm–5am107 flights65.4%

Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.0% on time, against 77.5% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 713 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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, December worst

December is the weak month at 58.0% on time, against 78.0% 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. June was the busiest month here, with 237 flights.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 74.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.3%. 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 65,000 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
37%
Late-arriving aircraft
23%
Extreme weather
22%
National Airspace System
17%
Security
0%

Extreme weather accounts for 22% 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 3.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 64,567 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 24,000 of the 65,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations run at 2.93%, against 1.81% 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.3% 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 693 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.1% on time across 2,594 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 2,594 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.

What to do with this

Booking this route

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.93% 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. 2,508 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

ORD to OKC questions

How often is ORD to OKC delayed?

Roughly one flight in three arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 30.7% of the 2,594 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.

How reliable is ORD to OKC compared with the rest of the country?

69.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 8 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 OKC?

The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 77.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 62.0%, 16 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 OKC?

December is the weakest month at 58.0% on time, compared with 78.0% 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.

Where to go next

Direction matters. ORD to OKC and OKC to ORD are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures