Route reliability record
TUL→ORD
Tulsa to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,142
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 585 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 2,142 TUL to ORD flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 993 at 80.2% on time.
Best time to fly TUL to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 81.6%, against 78.1% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
78.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,082 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.57%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
80.2% on time across 993 flights
These figures cover 2,142 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% 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 TUL to ORD
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 108 | 84.1% | 82 min | 0.93% | B+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 63 | 81.0% | 61 min | 7.94% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 993 | 80.2% | 100 min | 1.71% | B |
| Envoy Air | 887 | 77.3% | 75 min | 3.38% | B− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 91 | 55.1% | 114 min | 2.20% | D |
Envoy Air cancels 3.4% 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.
Flight by flight
Flights on TUL to ORD
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Tulsa 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. TUL → ORDTulsa to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 78.8% | 80.2% | 1.71% | 8am–11am, Thu | OO 5296 14:20 |
| 2. TUL → ORDTulsa to Chicago | Envoy Air | 74.7% | 77.3% | 3.38% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
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 12 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am456 flights83.4%
- 8am–11am625 flights81.6%
- 11am–2pm251 flights72.1%
- 2pm–5pm438 flights76.8%
- 5pm–8pm368 flights71.2%
- 8pm–5am4 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 83.4% of the time, against 71.2% for the evening window. That is 12 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 625 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter TUL 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 TUL to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 83.4% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 71.2%, a wide gap of 12.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am83.4%
- 8–11am81.6%
- 11am–2pm72.1%
- 2–5pm76.8%
- 5–8pm71.2%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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 70.8% on time, against 88.9% in February. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 197 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.1%, 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 40,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 24%Carrier
- 10%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 40,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. The split is drawn from 40,293 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 83.4% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.57%, against 1.89% 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
9.5% 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 585 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.7% on time across 2,143 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,142 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. February runs 88.9% on time and December 70.8%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,082 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TUL to ORD questions
How often is TUL to ORD delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.9% of the 2,142 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 TUL to ORD?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 80.2% on time across 993 flights. Envoy Air is at the other end on 77.3%, a gap of 3 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 TUL to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 83.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 71.2%, 12 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 TUL to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 70.8% on time, compared with 88.9% in February. Across the year that is 18 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 TUL — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- United Airlines on TUL to ORD84.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on TUL to ORD80.2%
- Envoy Air on TUL to ORD77.3%
- TUL to DFW, a related route79.1%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- TUL to DEN, a related route80.4%
- United Airlines on-time record84.1%
- Republic Airways on-time record81.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record80.2%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. TUL to ORD and ORD to TUL 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.