Route reliability record
ROA→ORD
Roanoke to Chicago
- Flights
- 847
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 530 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route 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 close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 847 ROA to ORD flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly ROA to ORD: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Monday. Flights in that window arrived on time 80.0% of the time and Monday flights 80.7%, against 74.7% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
74.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 825 completed flights
Avg delay
101 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.60%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
72.6% on time across 557 flights
These figures cover 847 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.4% 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 ROA 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 290 | 78.5% | 72 min | 2.07% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 557 | 72.6% | 113 min | 2.87% | C |
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 21 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am409 flights79.9%
- 8am–11am141 flights80.0%
- 11am–2pm94 flights77.8%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm203 flights58.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.9% on time, against 80.0% 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 409 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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 62.7% on time, against 88.3% 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. September was the busiest month here, with 117 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 80.7% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 68.6%. 12 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 44% of the 21,000 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.
- 44%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, 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 9,350 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 21,045 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am 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 2.60%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.4% 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 530 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 69.5% on time across 848 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 847 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. 847 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 74.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 825 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ROA to ORD questions
How often is ROA 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 25.3% of the 847 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is ROA to ORD compared with the rest of the country?
74.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ROA to ORD?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 80.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 58.9%, 21 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 ROA to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 62.7% on time, compared with 88.3% in May. Across the year that is 26 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 ROA — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on ROA to ORD78.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on ROA to ORD72.6%
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- BOS to ORD, a related route72.7%
- DCA to ORD, a related route74.3%
- Republic Airways on-time record78.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record72.6%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. ROA to ORD and ORD to ROA 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.