Route reliability record
PNS→ORD
Pensacola to Chicago
- Flights
- 756
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 794 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 756 PNS to ORD flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly PNS to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 80.0% of the time and Saturday flights 81.7%, against 76.5% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 732 completed flights
Avg delay
99 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.51%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
—
No carrier clears the floor
These figures cover 756 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.2% 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 PNS to ORD
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 21 | 94.7% | 438 min | 4.76% | A− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 288 | 78.3% | 89 min | 2.78% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 84 | 76.9% | 117 min | 7.14% | B− |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 363 | 74.0% | 98 min | 1.10% | C |
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
The best time of day to leave
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 756 flights.
- 5am–8am30 flights80.0%
- 8am–11am26 flights—
- 11am–2pm163 flights78.8%
- 2pm–5pm536 flights75.0%
- 5pm–8pm1 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 80.0% on time for the 5am–8am window against 75.0% for 2pm–5pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 536 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter PNS 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 PNS to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 80.0% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 75.0%, a real gap of 5.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am80.0%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm78.8%
- 2–5pm75.0%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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.
August is the worst month at 61.3% on time, 29 points below October, the best at 90.3%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. March was the busiest month here, with 114 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 81.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 68.5%, a spread of 13 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 17,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 11%Carrier
- 8%Extreme weather
50% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 16,951 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 80.0% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.51%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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
12.2% 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.
The 794 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 runs 78.8% on time across 756 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 756 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in ORD after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 756 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 76.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 732 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PNS to ORD questions
How often is PNS 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 23.5% of the 756 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is PNS to ORD compared with the rest of the country?
76.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of about a point against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PNS to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 80.0% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 75.0%, 5 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 August delays on PNS to ORD?
August is the weakest month at 61.3% on time, compared with 90.3% in October. 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
- ORD to PNS — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on PNS to ORD78.3%
- United Airlines on PNS to ORD74.0%
- PNS to ATL, a related route88.8%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- PNS to CLT, a related route83.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record94.7%
- Envoy Air on-time record78.3%
- Republic Airways on-time record76.9%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. PNS to ORD and ORD to PNS are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed PNS to ORD’s on-time badge on your site
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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.