Route reliability record
ORD→RIC
Chicago to Richmond
- Flights
- 2,273
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 642 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, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,273 ORD to RIC flights, of which Envoy Air flew 459 at 77.1% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to RIC: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 82.3% of the time and Saturday flights 76.7%, against 70.8% for the route overall.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 77.1% on time across 459 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,202 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.90%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
77.1% on time across 459 flights
These figures cover 2,273 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.6% 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 RIC
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 77.1% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 62.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 582 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 459 | 77.1% | 63 min | 2.40% | B |
| Republic Airways | 937 | 76.8% | 70 min | 2.45% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 582 | 62.1% | 94 min | 4.47% | D− |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 295 | 58.5% | 76 min | 2.03% | D |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 4.5% 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.
Flight by flight
Flights on ORD to RIC
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Chicago to Richmond
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ORD → RICChicago to Richmond | Envoy Air | 75.2% | 77.1% | 2.40% | 8am–11am, Sun | — |
| 2. ORD → RICChicago to Richmond | Republic Airways | 74.9% | 76.8% | 2.45% | 11am–2pm, Tue | YX 3523 14:30 |
| 3. ORD → RICChicago to Richmond | SkyWest Airlines | 59.3% | 62.1% | 4.47% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
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 23 points, against 15 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am97 flights82.3%
- 8am–11am631 flights76.7%
- 11am–2pm150 flights79.9%
- 2pm–5pm675 flights70.9%
- 5pm–8pm398 flights59.4%
- 8pm–5am322 flights64.6%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.4% on time, against 82.3% 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 675 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to RIC 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 RIC, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 82.3% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 59.4%, a wide gap of 22.9 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am82.3%
- 8–11am76.7%
- 11am–2pm79.9%
- 2–5pm70.9%
- 5–8pm59.4%
- 8pm–5am64.6%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 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 50.3% on time, against 79.7% 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. April was the busiest month here, with 243 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 76.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.6%, a spread of 11 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 50,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 15%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 2.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 50,016 reported delay minutes.
39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 50,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations run at 2.90%, 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
10.6% 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 642 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 78.2% on time across 2,264 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,273 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 RIC after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.90% 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. 2,202 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to RIC questions
How often is ORD to RIC 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 29.2% of the 2,273 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 RIC?
Envoy Air leads at 77.1% on time across 459 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 62.1%, a gap of 15 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 RIC?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 82.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 59.4%, 23 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 RIC?
December is the weakest month at 50.3% on time, compared with 79.7% in May. Across the year that is 29 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
- RIC to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ORD to RIC77.1%
- Republic Airways on ORD to RIC76.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to RIC62.1%
- United Airlines on ORD to RIC58.5%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- ATL to RIC, a related route81.6%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record77.1%
- Republic Airways on-time record76.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record62.1%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ORD to RIC and RIC 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.