Route reliability record
SRQ→ORD
Sarasota to Chicago
- Flights
- 999
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,050 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 999 SRQ to ORD flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
Best time to fly SRQ to ORD: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.0% of the time and Thursday flights 75.4%, against 68.5% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 91 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 972 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.80%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
71.3% on time across 617 flights
These figures cover 999 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.8% 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 SRQ 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 121 | 72.5% | 70 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| United Airlines | 617 | 71.3% | 84 min | 1.62% | C |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 217 | 63.1% | 73 min | 3.69% | D− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 42 | 47.6% | 81 min | 0.00% | F+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 0.0% | 109 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Sarasota 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. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. TPA → ORDTampa to Chicago | United Airlines | 74.6% | 75.0% | 0.50% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 2. TPA → MDWTampa to Chicago | Southwest Airlines | 73.5% | 75.0% | 2.00% | 5am–8am, Wed (route) | — |
| 3. TPA → ORDTampa to Chicago | American Airlines | 71.8% | 73.2% | 1.93% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 4. SRQ → ORDSarasota to Chicago | United Airlines | 70.1% | 71.3% | 1.62% | 8am–11am, Thu | — |
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 42 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–8am21 flights—
- 8am–11am187 flights89.0%
- 11am–2pm278 flights70.4%
- 2pm–5pm417 flights61.4%
- 5pm–8pm96 flights46.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 46.7% on time, against 89.0% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 417 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 34 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.
July is the worst month at 50.0% on time, 34 points below October, the best at 83.8%. 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 156 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 75.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 58.8%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 24,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%National Airspace System
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 24,392 reported delay minutes.
42% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 10,000 minutes out of 24,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.80% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.90%.
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. 12.8% 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.
The 1,050 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 77.4% on time across 998 flights, 9 points above 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 999 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. 999 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 68.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 972 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SRQ to ORD questions
How often is SRQ 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 31.5% of the 999 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is SRQ to ORD compared with the rest of the country?
68.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 9 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SRQ to ORD?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 89.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 46.7%, 42 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 July delays on SRQ to ORD?
July is the weakest month at 50.0% on time, compared with 83.8% in October. Across the year that is 34 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 SRQ — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on SRQ to ORD72.5%
- United Airlines on SRQ to ORD71.3%
- American Airlines on SRQ to ORD63.1%
- SRQ to ATL, a related route88.9%
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- SRQ to CLT, a related route85.2%
- Envoy Air on-time record72.5%
- United Airlines on-time record71.3%
- American Airlines on-time record63.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. SRQ to ORD and ORD to SRQ are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed SRQ to ORD’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.