Route reliability record
ORD→PVD
Chicago to Providence
- Flights
- 1,727
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 849 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.4% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten 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 1,727 ORD to PVD flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 754 at 66.1% 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 75.0%, against 69.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 80 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,663 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.36%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
66.1% on time across 754 flights
These figures cover 1,727 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.2% 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 PVD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 66.1% of the time; American Airlines manages 59.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 432 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 328 | 86.3% | 65 min | 3.96% | A− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 94 | 75.3% | 66 min | 5.32% | B− |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 119 | 72.9% | 54 min | 0.84% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 754 | 66.1% | 70 min | 3.32% | C− |
| American Airlines | 432 | 59.6% | 88 min | 3.24% | D− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 3.3% 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.
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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 | 80.6% | 82.7% | 2.50% | 8am–11am, Thu | — |
| 2. MDW → PVDChicago to Providence | Southwest Airlines | 76.5% | 77.6% | 1.42% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. ORD → BOSChicago to Boston | United Airlines | 66.8% | 68.0% | 1.79% | 5am–8am, Sat | UA 1693 13:55 |
| 4. ORD → BOSChicago to Boston | Republic Airways | 65.6% | 69.7% | 5.90% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 5. ORD → BOSChicago to Boston | JetBlue Airways | 65.4% | 68.1% | 3.98% | 5am–8am, Wed | B6 312 10:56 |
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 36 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am32 flights87.5%
- 8am–11am337 flights84.8%
- 11am–2pm517 flights74.4%
- 2pm–5pm118 flights55.4%
- 5pm–8pm636 flights60.8%
- 8pm–5am87 flights51.2%
Scale runs 45% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 51.2% 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 636 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to PVD 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 PVD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 87.5% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 51.2%, a wide gap of 36.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am87.5%
- 8–11am84.8%
- 11am–2pm74.4%
- 2–5pm55.4%
- 5–8pm60.8%
- 8pm–5am51.2%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
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 75.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 63.3%, 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 38,000 reported delay minutes.
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 22%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 38,084 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 3.36%, 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
12.2% 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 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.5% on time across 1,727 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 1,727 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 3.36% 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. 1,663 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to PVD questions
How often is ORD to PVD 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 30.7% of the 1,727 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 PVD?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 66.1% on time across 754 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 59.6%, a gap of 6 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 51.2%, 36 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 PVD86.3%
- United Airlines on ORD to PVD72.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to PVD66.1%
- American Airlines on ORD to PVD59.6%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- DCA to PVD, a related route72.5%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record86.3%
- Republic Airways on-time record75.3%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.