Route reliability record
ORD→TUS
Chicago to Tucson
- Flights
- 1,041
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,437 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, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,041 ORD to TUS flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 463 at 71.8% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to TUS: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 76.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 80.8%, against 68.9% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 87 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,019 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.73%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
71.8% on time across 463 flights
These figures cover 1,041 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.3% 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 TUS
The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 points 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 463 | 71.8% | 72 min | 1.94% | C |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 77 | 71.4% | 88 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| American Airlines | 482 | 66.2% | 84 min | 1.87% | C |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 19 | 57.9% | 61 min | 0.00% | D+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 71.8%, 6 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Chicago to Tucson
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 → TUSChicago to Tucson | SkyWest Airlines | 70.4% | 71.8% | 1.94% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. ORD → TUSChicago to Tucson | American Airlines | 65.0% | 66.2% | 1.87% | 8am–11am, 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 23 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am612 flights76.3%
- 11am–2pm45 flights62.2%
- 2pm–5pm13 flights—
- 5pm–8pm124 flights64.7%
- 8pm–5am246 flights53.6%
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 53.6% on time, against 76.3% for the 8am–11am 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 612 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 33 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 85.0% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. April was the busiest month here, with 114 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 59.6%. 21 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 25,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
42% 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 25,000 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 24,885 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 8,558 of the 25,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.73% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.38%.
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. 12.3% 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 1,437 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 75.9% on time across 1,039 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,041 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 TUS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,041 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 68.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,019 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to TUS questions
How often is ORD to TUS delayed?
About 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 31.1% of the 1,041 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to TUS?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 71.8% on time across 463 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 66.2%, a gap of 6 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 TUS?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 76.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 53.6%, 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 April delays on ORD to TUS?
April is the weakest month at 51.8% on time, compared with 85.0% in September. Across the year that is 33 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
- TUS to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to TUS71.8%
- American Airlines on ORD to TUS66.2%
- ORD to LGA, a related route67.3%
- PHX to TUS, a related route82.3%
- ORD to BOS, a related route67.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record71.8%
- United Airlines on-time record71.4%
- American Airlines on-time record66.2%
- 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 TUS and TUS 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.