Route reliability record
RIC→ORD
Richmond to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,264
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 642 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.1% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about four flights in five arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 2,264 RIC to ORD flights, of which Republic Airways flew 928 at 82.4% on time.
Best time to fly RIC to ORD: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 82.5%, against 78.2% for the route overall.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 82.4% on time across 928 flights.
Key figures
On time
78.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,160 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.11%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Republic
82.4% on time across 928 flights
These figures cover 2,264 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.1% 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 RIC to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 82.4% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 67.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 583 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 295 | 84.0% | 53 min | 2.71% | B |
| Republic Airways | 928 | 82.4% | 83 min | 3.88% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 458 | 79.2% | 80 min | 3.28% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 583 | 67.8% | 114 min | 5.83% | C− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.8% 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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Richmond 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. RIC → ORDRichmond to Chicago | Republic Airways | 79.2% | 82.4% | 3.88% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. RIC → ORDRichmond to Chicago | Envoy Air | 76.6% | 79.2% | 3.28% | 5am–8am, Sun | — |
| 3. RIC → ORDRichmond to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 63.8% | 67.8% | 5.83% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
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 15 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am669 flights84.3%
- 8am–11am423 flights86.0%
- 11am–2pm384 flights78.8%
- 2pm–5pm99 flights66.3%
- 5pm–8pm498 flights73.1%
- 8pm–5am191 flights56.3%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.3% on time, against 86.0% 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 669 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter RIC 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 RIC to ORD, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 86.0% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 56.3%, a wide gap of 29.7 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am84.3%
- 8–11am86.0%
- 11am–2pm78.8%
- 2–5pm66.3%
- 5–8pm73.1%
- 8pm–5am56.3%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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 66.4% on time, against 86.2% in February. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 239 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 74.4%, 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 43,000 reported delay minutes.
- 31%Carrier
- 31%National Airspace System
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 11%Extreme weather
No single cause dominates. carrier at 31%, national airspace system at 31% and late-arriving aircraft at 26% split the 43,000 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. The split is drawn from 42,748 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.11%, against 1.89% 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
9.1% 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 642 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 70.8% on time across 2,273 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,264 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 4.11% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 2,160 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RIC to ORD questions
How often is RIC to ORD delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.8% of the 2,264 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on RIC to ORD?
Republic Airways leads at 82.4% on time across 928 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 67.8%, a gap of 15 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 RIC to ORD?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 86.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 56.3%, 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 RIC to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 66.4% on time, compared with 86.2% in February. Across the year that is 20 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 RIC — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- United Airlines on RIC to ORD84.0%
- Republic Airways on RIC to ORD82.4%
- Envoy Air on RIC to ORD79.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on RIC to ORD67.8%
- RIC to ATL, a related route88.5%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- RIC to CLT, a related route82.9%
- United Airlines on-time record84.0%
- Republic Airways on-time record82.4%
- Envoy Air on-time record79.2%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. RIC to ORD and ORD to RIC 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.