Route reliability record
ORD→TYS
Chicago to Knoxville
- Flights
- 2,165
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 475 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.6% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three 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 2,165 ORD to TYS flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 895 at 70.4% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to TYS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 78.5% of the time and Saturday flights 69.8%, against 66.8% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 105 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,081 completed flights
Avg delay
96 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.65%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
70.4% on time across 895 flights
These figures cover 2,165 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.1% 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 TYS
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 70.4% of the time; PSA Airlines manages 60.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 653 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 42 | 85.7% | 67 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 243 | 72.7% | 57 min | 2.06% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 895 | 70.4% | 73 min | 2.46% | C |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 332 | 63.0% | 89 min | 1.20% | D |
| PSA Airlines | 653 | 60.0% | 136 min | 7.35% | D− |
PSA Airlines cancels 7.3% 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 Knoxville
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 → TYSChicago to Knoxville | SkyWest Airlines | 68.7% | 70.4% | 2.46% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. ORD → TYSChicago to Knoxville | PSA Airlines | 55.6% | 60.0% | 7.35% | 8am–11am, Fri | — |
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 22 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am185 flights78.5%
- 8am–11am559 flights72.5%
- 11am–2pm185 flights73.1%
- 2pm–5pm495 flights66.0%
- 5pm–8pm611 flights56.5%
- 8pm–5am130 flights66.4%
Scale runs 50% to 85%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.5% on time, against 78.5% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 611 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to TYS 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 TYS, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 78.5% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 56.5%, a wide gap of 22.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am78.5%
- 8–11am72.5%
- 11am–2pm73.1%
- 2–5pm66.0%
- 5–8pm56.5%
- 8pm–5am66.4%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 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.
January is the weak month at 50.9% on time, against 79.9% 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. October was the busiest month here, with 233 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 69.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 63.3%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 67,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 67,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 66,540 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 78.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.65%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 25 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
15.1% 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.
At 475 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 68.8% on time across 2,165 flights, within 2 points 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 2,165 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 TYS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.65% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 2,081 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to TYS questions
How often is ORD to TYS 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 33.2% of the 2,165 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to TYS?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 70.4% on time across 895 flights. PSA Airlines is at the other end on 60.0%, a gap of 10 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 TYS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 78.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 56.5%, 22 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 January delays on ORD to TYS?
January is the weakest month at 50.9% on time, compared with 79.9% in September. Across the year that is 29 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
- TYS to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ORD to TYS72.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to TYS70.4%
- United Airlines on ORD to TYS63.0%
- PSA Airlines on ORD to TYS60.0%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- DFW to TYS, a related route71.8%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- Republic Airways on-time record85.7%
- Envoy Air on-time record72.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record70.4%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ORD to TYS and TYS 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.