Carrier route record

OHORF→ORD

PSA Airlines · Norfolk to Chicago

Flights: 186
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 10%
Carriers: 6

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. 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, Envoy Air, flew 397 at 76.7% on time.

Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 76.7% on time across 397 flights.

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 1.81%

Whole route

75.9%

Every carrier on ORF to ORD, 1,865 flights

These figures cover 186 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% 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 ORF to ORD

PSA flew 186 of the 1,865 flights on ORF to ORD, about 10% of it. Its 74.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 75.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 85.8% to American at 50.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The three carriers here are closely matched: 3 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.

On-time performance by carrier on ORF to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	156	85.8%	88 min	0.64%	A+
Envoy Air	397	76.7%	66 min	2.02%	B
Republic Airways	430	75.8%	62 min	3.02%	B−
PSA Airlines (this page)thin sample	186	74.9%	81 min	7.53%	C−
United Airlines	690	73.7%	71 min	1.74%	C
American Airlinesthin sample	6	50.0%	29 min	0.00%	F+

Republic Airways cancels 3.0% 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.

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%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

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.

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.

Carrier
31%
Late-arriving aircraft
30%
National Airspace System
29%
Extreme weather
10%

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 1.81% 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 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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. 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 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.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures