Route reliability record
ORD→SYR
Chicago to Syracuse
- Flights
- 2,217
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 607 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,217 ORD to SYR flights, of which Envoy Air flew 670 at 80.6% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to SYR: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 77.3%, against 74.7% for the route overall.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 80.6% on time across 670 flights.
Key figures
On time
74.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,153 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.71%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
80.6% on time across 670 flights
These figures cover 2,217 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.2% 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 SYR
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 80.6% of the time; United Airlines manages 69.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 426 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 670 | 80.6% | 60 min | 2.54% | B |
| Republic Airways | 726 | 78.8% | 79 min | 3.17% | B− |
| United Airlines | 426 | 69.1% | 84 min | 1.64% | C |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 306 | 65.5% | 80 min | 4.25% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 89 | 56.2% | 106 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Republic Airways cancels 3.2% 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 Syracuse
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 → SYRChicago to Syracuse | Envoy Air | 78.6% | 80.6% | 2.54% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. ORD → SYRChicago to Syracuse | Republic Airways | 76.3% | 78.8% | 3.17% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 3. ORD → SYRChicago to Syracuse | United Airlines | 68.0% | 69.1% | 1.64% | 2pm–5pm, Tue | — |
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 21 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am251 flights85.6%
- 8am–11am313 flights83.8%
- 11am–2pm372 flights81.1%
- 2pm–5pm544 flights71.5%
- 5pm–8pm421 flights64.5%
- 8pm–5am316 flights68.3%
Scale runs 55% to 90%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.5% on time, against 85.6% 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 544 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to SYR 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 SYR, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 85.6% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 64.5%, a wide gap of 21.1 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am85.6%
- 8–11am83.8%
- 11am–2pm81.1%
- 2–5pm71.5%
- 5–8pm64.5%
- 8pm–5am68.3%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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 62.1% on time, against 82.3% in April. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 223 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 77.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 71.8%, a spread of 6 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 42,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 12%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 2.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 42,426 reported delay minutes.
46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 42,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one.
Cancellations run at 2.71%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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
11.2% 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 607 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 runs 73.6% on time across 2,215 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 2,217 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 SYR after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 82.3% on time and December 62.1%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,153 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to SYR questions
How often is ORD to SYR delayed?
About 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 25.3% of the 2,217 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 SYR?
Envoy Air leads at 80.6% on time across 670 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 69.1%, a gap of 12 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 SYR?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 64.5%, 21 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 SYR?
December is the weakest month at 62.1% on time, compared with 82.3% in April. Across the year that is 20 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
- SYR to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ORD to SYR80.6%
- Republic Airways on ORD to SYR78.8%
- United Airlines on ORD to SYR69.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to SYR65.5%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- ATL to SYR, a related route80.0%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record80.6%
- Republic Airways on-time record78.8%
- United Airlines on-time record69.1%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ORD to SYR and SYR 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.