Route reliability record
ORD→SRQ
Chicago to Sarasota
- Flights
- 998
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,050 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 998 ORD to SRQ flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly ORD to SRQ: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 87.7%, against 77.4% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 984 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.20%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
79.4% on time across 617 flights
These figures cover 998 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 SRQ
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 121 | 83.5% | 61 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 617 | 79.4% | 70 min | 0.65% | B+ |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 216 | 70.7% | 75 min | 3.70% | C− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 42 | 66.7% | 91 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 50.0% | 198 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Chicago to Sarasota
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. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ORD → SRQChicago to Sarasota | United Airlines | 78.9% | 79.4% | 0.65% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. ORD → TPAChicago to Tampa | United Airlines | 78.0% | 78.4% | 0.50% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 1834 11:12 |
| 3. MDW → TPAChicago to Tampa | Southwest Airlines | 75.5% | 76.6% | 1.42% | 5am–8am, Wed (route) | — |
| 4. ORD → TPAChicago to Tampa | American Airlines | 66.7% | 68.0% | 1.93% | 8am–11am, Tue | AA 2920 08:58 |
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 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–8am86 flights83.3%
- 8am–11am203 flights81.1%
- 11am–2pm497 flights75.2%
- 2pm–5pm154 flights78.3%
- 5pm–8pm13 flights—
- 8pm–5am45 flights67.4%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 83.3% of the time, against 67.4% for the overnight window. That is 16 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 497 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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.
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 67.8%. June is the strongest month at 91.2%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 23 points. March was the busiest month here, with 156 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.8%. 19 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 45% of the 16,000 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.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
45% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 16,107 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 83.3% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.20% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.20%.
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 1,050 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 68.5% on time across 999 flights, 9 points below 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 998 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 SRQ after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 998 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 77.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 984 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to SRQ questions
How often is ORD to SRQ delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.6% of the 998 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is ORD to SRQ compared with the rest of the country?
77.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ORD to SRQ?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 83.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 67.4%, 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 March delays on ORD to SRQ?
March is the weakest month at 67.8% on time, compared with 91.2% in June. Across the year that is 23 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
- SRQ to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ORD to SRQ83.5%
- United Airlines on ORD to SRQ79.4%
- American Airlines on ORD to SRQ70.7%
- ORD to LGA, a related route67.3%
- ATL to SRQ, a related route81.6%
- ORD to BOS, a related route67.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record83.5%
- United Airlines on-time record79.4%
- American Airlines on-time record70.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. ORD to SRQ and SRQ 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.