Route reliability record
ORD→PVD
Chicago to Providence
- Flights
- 1,654
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 849 mi
- Carriers
- 5
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, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,654 ORD to PVD flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 768 at 65.7% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to PVD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.5% of the time and Thursday flights 75.2%, against 68.7% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 89 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,601 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.96%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
65.7% on time across 768 flights
These figures cover 1,654 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.6% 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 PVD
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 274 | 84.0% | 64 min | 4.38% | B− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 62 | 81.4% | 59 min | 4.84% | B− |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 119 | 72.9% | 54 min | 0.84% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 768 | 65.7% | 70 min | 2.73% | C |
| American Airlines | 431 | 61.5% | 89 min | 2.78% | D |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 65.7%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Chicago to Providence
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. 5 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ORD → BOSChicago to Boston | Envoy Air | 80.7% | 82.8% | 2.48% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
| 2. MDW → PVDChicago to Providence | Southwest Airlines | 74.8% | 75.9% | 1.41% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. ORD → BOSChicago to Boston | JetBlue Airways | 71.6% | 73.5% | 2.62% | 5am–8am, Wed | B6 312 08:40 |
| 4. ORD → BOSChicago to Boston | United Airlines | 67.3% | 68.6% | 1.87% | 5am–8am, Sat | UA 2067 07:30 |
| 5. ORD → BOSChicago to Boston | Delta Air Lines | 67.0% | 69.1% | 3.01% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
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 38 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am32 flights87.5%
- 8am–11am241 flights83.4%
- 11am–2pm576 flights74.1%
- 2pm–5pm95 flights54.4%
- 5pm–8pm655 flights61.1%
- 8pm–5am55 flights50.0%
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 50.0% on time, against 87.5% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 655 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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 55.4% on time, against 77.7% in June. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 181 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 75.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 63.1%. 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 37,000 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 13%Extreme weather
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 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 37,134 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 87.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.96%, 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. 12.6% 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.
The 849 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 73.6% on time across 1,654 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,654 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 PVD after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.96% 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. 1,601 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to PVD questions
How often is ORD to PVD 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 31.3% of the 1,654 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to PVD?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 65.7% on time across 768 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 61.5%, a gap of 4 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 PVD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 50.0%, 38 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 PVD?
December is the weakest month at 55.4% on time, compared with 77.7% in June. Across the year that is 22 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
- PVD to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ORD to PVD84.0%
- United Airlines on ORD to PVD72.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to PVD65.7%
- American Airlines on ORD to PVD61.5%
- ORD to LGA, a related route67.3%
- DCA to PVD, a related route72.8%
- ORD to BOS, a related route67.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record84.0%
- Republic Airways on-time record81.4%
- United Airlines on-time record72.9%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ORD to PVD and PVD 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.