Route reliability record
TPA→ORD
Tampa to Chicago
- Flights
- 3,171
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,012 mi
- Carriers
- 7
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, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 3,171 TPA to ORD flights, of which United Airlines flew 1,442 at 74.4% on time.
Best time to fly TPA to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 80.5%, against 72.9% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 44 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,104 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.55%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
74.4% on time across 1,442 flights
These figures cover 3,171 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.4% 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 TPA to ORD
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 2 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 1,442 | 74.4% | 79 min | 0.62% | C+ |
| American Airlines | 1,154 | 73.8% | 92 min | 1.91% | C |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 214 | 68.1% | 57 min | 0.93% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 138 | 66.9% | 152 min | 5.07% | C− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 220 | 65.9% | 86 min | 4.09% | C− |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 74.4%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Tampa 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. 2 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 | 73.9% | 74.4% | 0.62% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. TPA → MDWTampa to Chicago | Southwest Airlines | 73.1% | 74.7% | 2.17% | 5am–8am, Wed (route) | — |
| 3. TPA → ORDTampa to Chicago | American Airlines | 72.4% | 73.8% | 1.91% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 4. SRQ → ORDSarasota to Chicago | United Airlines | 69.6% | 70.6% | 1.45% | 8am–11am, 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 half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am612 flights88.8%
- 8am–11am402 flights86.0%
- 11am–2pm780 flights77.2%
- 2pm–5pm784 flights59.6%
- 5pm–8pm551 flights58.6%
- 8pm–5am42 flights62.2%
Scale runs 50% to 95%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.6% on time, against 88.8% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 784 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter TPA 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 TPA to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 88.8% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 58.6%, a wide gap of 30.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am88.8%
- 8–11am86.0%
- 11am–2pm77.2%
- 2–5pm59.6%
- 5–8pm58.6%
- 8pm–5am62.2%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 89.2% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 341 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.3%, a spread of 15 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 72,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%National Airspace System
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 72,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 72,460 reported delay minutes.
38% 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 28,000 minutes out of 72,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.55% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.57%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
10.4% 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 1,012 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 72.8% on time across 3,174 flights, within half 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 3,171 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 calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 89.2% on time and March 62.8%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 3,104 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TPA to ORD questions
How often is TPA 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 27.1% of the 3,171 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 TPA to ORD?
United Airlines leads at 74.4% on time across 1,442 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 73.8%, a gap of half a point. 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 TPA to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 88.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 58.6%, 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 March delays on TPA to ORD?
March is the weakest month at 62.8% on time, compared with 89.2% in September. 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 TPA — the return legseparate record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- United Airlines on TPA to ORD74.4%
- American Airlines on TPA to ORD73.8%
- Southwest Airlines on TPA to ORD68.1%
- Frontier Airlines on TPA to ORD66.9%
- Spirit Airlines on TPA to ORD65.9%
- TPA to ATL, a related route79.6%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- TPA to DEN, a related route81.1%
- Envoy Air on-time record100.0%
- Republic Airways on-time record100.0%
- United Airlines on-time record74.4%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. TPA to ORD and ORD to TPA 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.