Route reliability record
ORD→TUL
Chicago to Tulsa
- Flights
- 2,143
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 585 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, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,143 ORD to TUL flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 991 at 75.4% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to TUL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 79.6% of the time and Saturday flights 78.1%, against 73.7% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
73.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,085 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.47%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
75.4% on time across 991 flights
These figures cover 2,143 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.4% 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 TUL
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 63 | 87.7% | 74 min | 9.52% | A− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 991 | 75.4% | 68 min | 1.31% | B |
| Envoy Air | 887 | 74.7% | 63 min | 3.38% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 91 | 65.9% | 108 min | 3.30% | C− |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 111 | 50.0% | 77 min | 0.90% | F+ |
Envoy Air cancels 3.4% 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 TUL
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 Tulsa
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 → TULChicago to Tulsa | SkyWest Airlines | 74.4% | 75.4% | 1.31% | 8am–11am, Thu | OO 5795 08:45 |
| 2. ORD → TULChicago to Tulsa | Envoy Air | 72.2% | 74.7% | 3.38% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
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 15 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am54 flights79.6%
- 8am–11am613 flights78.8%
- 11am–2pm436 flights77.7%
- 2pm–5pm243 flights75.8%
- 5pm–8pm206 flights71.2%
- 8pm–5am591 flights64.7%
Scale runs 55% to 85%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 64.7% on time, against 79.6% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 613 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to TUL 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 TUL, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 79.6% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 64.7%, a wide gap of 14.9 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am79.6%
- 8–11am78.8%
- 11am–2pm77.7%
- 2–5pm75.8%
- 5–8pm71.2%
- 8pm–5am64.7%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
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.
December is the weak month at 63.1% on time, against 86.2% in September. 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 197 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 78.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.4%, a spread of 8 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.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 19%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 38,064 reported delay minutes.
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 38,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations sit at 2.47% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.23%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
10.4% 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 585 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 78.1% on time across 2,142 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,143 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 TUL 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. September runs 86.2% on time and December 63.1%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,085 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to TUL questions
How often is ORD to TUL 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 26.3% of the 2,143 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 TUL?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 75.4% on time across 991 flights. Envoy Air is at the other end on 74.7%, a gap of half a point. 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 TUL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 79.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 64.7%, 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 December delays on ORD to TUL?
December is the weakest month at 63.1% on time, compared with 86.2% in September. 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
- TUL to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to TUL75.4%
- Envoy Air on ORD to TUL74.7%
- United Airlines on ORD to TUL50.0%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- DFW to TUL, a related route73.2%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- Republic Airways on-time record87.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record75.4%
- Envoy Air on-time record74.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. ORD to TUL and TUL 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.