Route reliability record
SYR→ORD
Syracuse to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,215
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 607 mi
- Carriers
- 5
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, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 2,215 SYR to ORD flights, of which Envoy Air flew 670 at 81.3% on time.
Best time to fly SYR to ORD: a 2pm–5pm departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.2% of the time and Thursday flights 77.3%, against 73.6% for the route overall.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 81.3% on time across 670 flights.
Key figures
On time
73.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,136 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.16%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
81.3% on time across 670 flights
These figures cover 2,215 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SYR to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 81.3% of the time; Republic Airways manages 72.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 724 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 670 | 81.3% | 80 min | 2.39% | B |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 89 | 80.9% | 123 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 426 | 72.9% | 80 min | 2.35% | C |
| Republic Airways | 724 | 72.5% | 88 min | 4.01% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 306 | 57.4% | 87 min | 4.90% | D− |
Republic Airways cancels 4.0% 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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Syracuse 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. SYR → ORDSyracuse to Chicago | Envoy Air | 79.4% | 81.3% | 2.39% | 11am–2pm, Thu | — |
| 2. SYR → ORDSyracuse to Chicago | United Airlines | 71.2% | 72.9% | 2.35% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 3. SYR → ORDSyracuse to Chicago | Republic Airways | 69.6% | 72.5% | 4.01% | 2pm–5pm, Fri | — |
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 34 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am684 flights79.8%
- 8am–11am173 flights79.9%
- 11am–2pm409 flights80.1%
- 2pm–5pm167 flights85.2%
- 5pm–8pm633 flights62.4%
- 8pm–5am149 flights51.5%
Scale runs 45% to 90%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 51.5% on time, against 85.2% for the 2pm–5pm 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 684 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SYR 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 SYR to ORD, the best departure window is 2pm–5pm at 85.2% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 51.5%, a wide gap of 33.7 points. All US flights leaving 2pm–5pm ran 71.9%.
- 5–8am79.8%
- 8–11am79.9%
- 11am–2pm80.1%
- 2–5pm85.2%
- 5–8pm62.4%
- 8pm–5am51.5%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 30 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 55.4% on time, against 85.7% 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. October was the busiest month here, with 223 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 77.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 70.6%, a spread of 7 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 48,000 reported delay minutes.
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 28%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 11% 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 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 48,227 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.16%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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
10.5% 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 607 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 runs 74.7% on time across 2,217 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.
The sample behind these figures is 2,215 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 3.16% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 2pm–5pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 2,136 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SYR to ORD questions
How often is SYR 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 2,215 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 SYR to ORD?
Envoy Air leads at 81.3% on time across 670 flights. Republic Airways is at the other end on 72.5%, a gap of 9 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 SYR to ORD?
The 2pm–5pm departure window is the strongest at 85.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 51.5%, 34 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 SYR to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 55.4% on time, compared with 85.7% in May. Across the year that is 30 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 SYR — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on SYR to ORD81.3%
- United Airlines on SYR to ORD72.9%
- Republic Airways on SYR to ORD72.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on SYR to ORD57.4%
- SYR to ATL, a related route83.3%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- SYR to CLT, a related route78.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record81.3%
- American Airlines on-time record80.9%
- United Airlines on-time record72.9%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. SYR to ORD and ORD to SYR are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed SYR 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.