Carrier route record
OHORD→TYS
PSA Airlines · Chicago to Knoxville
- Flights
- 834
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 38%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on ORD to TYS carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 6.7% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, a little over half of flights arrive on time, worth a D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 834 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so PSA on ORD to TYS runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 174 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
60.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 778 completed flights
Avg delay
143 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.71%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
66.7%
Every carrier on ORD to TYS, 2,219 flights
These figures cover 834 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 21.3% 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
PSA against every carrier on ORD to TYS
PSA flew 834 of the 2,219 flights on ORD to TYS, about 38% of it. Its 60.2% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 66.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 79.1% to PSA at 60.2%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 | 176 | 79.1% | 46 min | 2.27% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 78 | 75.6% | 59 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 815 | 71.6% | 75 min | 1.84% | C |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 316 | 61.0% | 82 min | 2.53% | D |
| PSA Airlines (this page) | 834 | 60.2% | 143 min | 6.71% | D− |
Departure window
When PSA runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 25 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–8am—
- 8am–11am296 flights73.4%
- 11am–2pm51 flights64.0%
- 2pm–5pm191 flights56.2%
- 5pm–8pm295 flights48.3%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 40% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 48.3% on time, against 73.4% 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 296 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
PSA on ORD to TYS through the year
January is the weak month at 42.9% on time, against 78.2% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 91 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 66.3% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 54.7%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why PSA runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 65% of the 44,000 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.
- 65%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
65% 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 44,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 44,281 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 73.4% on time here.
Cancellations run at 6.71%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in fifteen 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 21.3% 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.
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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 60.6% on time across 834 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 834 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.
What to do with this
Booking PSA on ORD to TYS
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.71% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 2.4 hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 778 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to TYS, every carrier
- PSA on TYS to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to TYS79.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to TYS71.6%
- United Airlines on ORD to TYS61.0%
- PSA Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.