Carrier route record
OHORF→ORD
PSA Airlines · Norfolk to Chicago
- Flights
- 186
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on ORF to ORD sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 186 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 448 at 80.7% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 80.7% on time across 448 flights.
Key figures
On time
74.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 171 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
7.53%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
76.7%
Every carrier on ORF to ORD, 1,959 flights
These figures cover 186 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
PSA against every carrier on ORF to ORD
PSA flew 186 of the 1,959 flights on ORF to ORD, about 9% of it. Its 74.9% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 76.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 80.7% to American at 40.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 Airlines (this page)thin 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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When PSA runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 186 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split PSA's ORF to ORD record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 74.9% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
PSA on ORF to ORD through the year
- Oct–Dec 202560 flights80.4%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights67.1%
- Apr–Jun 202636 flights84.8%
Scale runs 60% to 90%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 74.9% on time across 186 flights.
PSA on ORF to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 84.8% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 67.1%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 62 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Arrival by arrival
How late PSA on ORF to ORD runs when it is late
PSA on ORF to ORD often beats the schedule: 77 of 171 completed flights, 45%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 43 late arrivals split 19 under half an hour, 10 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 14 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early77 flights45.0%
- Within 15 min51 flights29.8%
- 15–29 min late19 flights11.1%
- 30–59 min late10 flights5.8%
- 1–2 hours late6 flights3.5%
- 2+ hours late8 flights4.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 171 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 22 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 0 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 21 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at ORD.
The worst days
Worst days for PSA on ORF to ORD
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 February 2026, 7 hours 18 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across February, December, January and March, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 7 February 2026 | 7 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 December 2025 | 6 hours 18 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 7 January 2026 | 5 hours 32 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 23 March 2026 | 4 hours 41 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 1 December 2025 | 4 hours 19 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why PSA runs late on this route
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 3,464 reported delay minutes.
- 31%Carrier
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
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 74.3% on time here. The split is drawn from 3,464 reported delay minutes.
No single cause dominates. carrier at 31%, late-arriving aircraft at 30% and national airspace system at 29% split the 3,464 reported delay minutes between them. An even spread like this usually means the operation is running close to its designed capacity with no one obvious weak point, and it is the hardest pattern for a traveller to route around.
Cancellations run at 7.53%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twelve 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
8.2% 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 52.4% on time across 186 flights, 23 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 23 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 186 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 ORF to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 7.53% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 171 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORF to ORD, every carrier
- PSA on ORD to ORF, the return leg
- Republic Airways on ORF to ORD80.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORF to ORD80.7%
- Envoy Air on ORF to ORD74.6%
- United Airlines on ORF to ORD74.5%
- PSA Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.