Route reliability record
PVD→ORD
Providence to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,654
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 849 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,654 PVD to ORD flights, of which American Airlines flew 431 at 79.2% on time.
Best time to fly PVD to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 76.5%, against 73.6% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 40 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,590 completed flights
Avg delay
96 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.75%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
79.2% on time across 431 flights
These figures cover 1,654 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.6% 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
Which airline is most reliable on PVD to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 79.2% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 69.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 768 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 431 | 79.2% | 108 min | 3.02% | B− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 274 | 77.0% | 98 min | 5.84% | B− |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 119 | 75.7% | 42 min | 2.52% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 62 | 69.5% | 50 min | 4.84% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 768 | 69.4% | 102 min | 3.52% | C− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 3.5% 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Providence to Chicago
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. PVD → MDWProvidence to Chicago | Southwest Airlines | 83.2% | 84.6% | 1.68% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. PVD → ORDProvidence to Chicago | American Airlines | 76.8% | 79.2% | 3.02% | 5am–8am, Sun | — |
| 3. BOS → ORDBoston to Chicago | United Airlines | 73.6% | 75.0% | 1.90% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 1414 06:00 |
| 4. BOS → ORDBoston to Chicago | Envoy Air | 72.9% | 75.6% | 3.60% | 2pm–5pm, Mon | — |
| 5. BOS → ORDBoston to Chicago | JetBlue Airways | 71.9% | 73.6% | 2.25% | 5am–8am, Wed | B6 311 07:00 |
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 30 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am628 flights85.6%
- 8am–11am101 flights76.3%
- 11am–2pm234 flights76.3%
- 2pm–5pm313 flights67.8%
- 5pm–8pm378 flights55.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 55.8% on time, against 85.6% for the 5am–8am 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 628 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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.
December is the weak month at 65.1% on time, against 83.4% 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 181 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 76.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.8%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 42% of the 40,000 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.
- 42%Carrier
- 29%National Airspace System
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 17,000 of the 40,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 40,410 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.75%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.6% 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.
The 849 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 68.7% on time across 1,654 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 1,654 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 delay figures matter less here than the 3.75% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 1,590 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PVD to ORD questions
How often is PVD 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 26.4% of the 1,654 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on PVD to ORD?
American Airlines leads at 79.2% on time across 431 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 69.4%, a gap of 10 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 PVD to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 55.8%, 30 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 December delays on PVD to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 65.1% on time, compared with 83.4% in May. Across the year that is 18 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 PVD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- American Airlines on PVD to ORD79.2%
- Envoy Air on PVD to ORD77.0%
- United Airlines on PVD to ORD75.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on PVD to ORD69.4%
- PVD to DCA, a related route73.1%
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- PVD to BWI, a related route85.7%
- American Airlines on-time record79.2%
- Envoy Air on-time record77.0%
- United Airlines on-time record75.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. PVD to ORD and ORD to PVD 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.