Route reliability record
RST→ORD
Rochester to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,053
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 268 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.6% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three 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 1,053 RST to ORD flights, of which Envoy Air flew 547 at 73.4% on time.
Best time to fly RST to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 73.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 71.4%, against 65.1% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 125 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,004 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.56%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
73.4% on time across 547 flights
These figures cover 1,053 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.8% 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 RST to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 73.4% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 56.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 506 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 547 | 73.4% | 63 min | 4.94% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 506 | 56.3% | 109 min | 4.15% | D− |
Envoy Air cancels 4.9% 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 Rochester 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. RST → ORDRochester to Chicago | Envoy Air | 69.8% | 73.4% | 4.94% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 2. RST → ORDRochester to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 54.0% | 56.3% | 4.15% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 22 points, against 17 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am367 flights73.6%
- 8am–11am41 flights67.5%
- 11am–2pm275 flights70.1%
- 2pm–5pm57 flights55.4%
- 5pm–8pm313 flights51.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.9% on time, against 73.6% 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 367 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 42 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 45.1% on time, against 87.3% in September. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 94 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 71.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 58.2%. 13 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 43% of the 32,000 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.
- 43%Carrier
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%National Airspace System
- 16%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 16% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 31,818 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, 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 14,000 of the 32,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 4.56%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty 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. 16.8% 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.
At 268 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 63.8% on time across 1,053 flights, within about a point 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. 1,053 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: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.56% 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. 1,004 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RST to ORD questions
How often is RST to ORD delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 34.9% of the 1,053 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 RST to ORD?
Envoy Air leads at 73.4% on time across 547 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 56.3%, a gap of 17 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 RST to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 73.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 51.9%, 22 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 RST to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 45.1% on time, compared with 87.3% in September. Across the year that is 42 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 RST — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on RST to ORD73.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on RST to ORD56.3%
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- BOS to ORD, a related route72.7%
- DCA to ORD, a related route74.3%
- Envoy Air on-time record73.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record56.3%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. RST to ORD and ORD to RST 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.