Route reliability record
ORD→ROA
Chicago to Roanoke
- Flights
- 848
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 530 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% 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 848 ORD to ROA flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
Best time to fly ORD to ROA: a 2pm–5pm departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 72.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 76.1%, against 69.5% for the route overall.
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 81 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 814 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.30%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
68.3% on time across 557 flights
These figures cover 848 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.7% 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 ROA
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 291 | 72.1% | 71 min | 5.50% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 557 | 68.3% | 66 min | 2.15% | 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 15 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–8am142 flights70.5%
- 8am–11am36 flights57.6%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm216 flights72.6%
- 5pm–8pm211 flights68.0%
- 8pm–5am242 flights69.0%
Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 72.6% on time, ahead of 8am–11am at 57.6%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 242 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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.
July is the worst month at 53.4% on time, 28 points below November, the best at 81.1%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. September was the busiest month here, with 117 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 76.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 64.4%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 17,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
48% 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 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 16,765 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.30%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.7% 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 530 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 74.7% on time across 847 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 848 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in ROA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.30% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 2pm–5pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 814 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to ROA questions
How often is ORD to ROA 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 30.5% of the 848 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is ORD to ROA compared with the rest of the country?
69.5% 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 ROA?
The 2pm–5pm departure window is the strongest at 72.6% on time. The 8am–11am window is the weakest at 57.6%, 15 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 July delays on ORD to ROA?
July is the weakest month at 53.4% on time, compared with 81.1% in November. Across the year that is 28 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
- ROA to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on ORD to ROA72.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to ROA68.3%
- ORD to LGA, a related route67.3%
- ORD to BOS, a related route67.6%
- ORD to DCA, a related route69.1%
- Republic Airways on-time record72.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record68.3%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ORD to ROA and ROA to ORD are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed ORD to ROA’s on-time badge on your site
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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.