Route reliability record
ORF→ORD
Norfolk to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,959
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 717 mi
- Carriers
- 6
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 1,959 ORF to ORD flights, of which Republic Airways flew 448 at 80.7% on time.
Best time to fly ORF to ORD: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.7% of the time and Thursday flights 81.3%, against 76.7% for the route overall.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 80.7% on time across 448 flights.
Key figures
On time
76.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,901 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.30%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Republic
80.7% on time across 448 flights
These figures cover 1,959 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.3% 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 ORF to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 80.7% of the time; United Airlines manages 74.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 592 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 448 | 80.7% | 64 min | 1.56% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 279 | 80.7% | 75 min | 1.43% | B |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 186 | 74.9% | 81 min | 7.53% | C− |
| Envoy Air | 443 | 74.6% | 74 min | 2.48% | C |
| United Airlines | 592 | 74.5% | 72 min | 1.52% | C |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 11 | 40.0% | 79 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Republic leads United by 6 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Norfolk to Chicago
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. ORF → ORDNorfolk to Chicago | Republic Airways | 79.4% | 80.7% | 1.56% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
| 2. ORF → ORDNorfolk to Chicago | United Airlines | 73.4% | 74.5% | 1.52% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
| 3. ORF → ORDNorfolk to Chicago | Envoy Air | 72.7% | 74.6% | 2.48% | 5am–8am, 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 19 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am665 flights83.2%
- 8am–11am245 flights83.7%
- 11am–2pm303 flights81.7%
- 2pm–5pm169 flights69.9%
- 5pm–8pm532 flights64.6%
- 8pm–5am45 flights78.6%
Scale runs 55% to 90%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.6% on time, against 83.7% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 665 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORF to ORD 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 ORF to ORD, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 83.7% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 64.6%, a wide gap of 19.1 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am83.2%
- 8–11am83.7%
- 11am–2pm81.7%
- 2–5pm69.9%
- 5–8pm64.6%
- 8pm–5am78.6%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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 65.7% on time, against 85.1% in May. 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 210 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 81.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.8%, 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 32,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%National Airspace System
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
40% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 13,000 minutes out of 32,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 31,915 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 83.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.30% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.66%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 717 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 71.8% on time across 1,957 flights, 5 points below 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,959 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 ORD 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. May runs 85.1% on time and January 65.7%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 1,901 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORF to ORD questions
How often is ORF to ORD 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 23.3% of the 1,959 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 ORF to ORD?
Republic Airways leads at 80.7% on time across 448 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 74.5%, 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 ORF to ORD?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 83.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 64.6%, 19 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 ORF to ORD?
January is the weakest month at 65.7% on time, compared with 85.1% in May. Across the year that is 19 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
- ORD to ORF — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on ORF to ORD80.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORF to ORD80.7%
- PSA Airlines on ORF to ORD74.9%
- Envoy Air on ORF to ORD74.6%
- United Airlines on ORF to ORD74.5%
- ORF to ATL, a related route85.1%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- ORF to CLT, a related route81.3%
- Republic Airways on-time record80.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record80.7%
- PSA Airlines on-time record74.9%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. ORF to ORD and ORD to ORF 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.