Route reliability record
TUL→ORD
Tulsa to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,155
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 585 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route lands a B, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,155 flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 1,057 at 78.4% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
76.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,097 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.51%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
78.4% on time across 1,057 flights
These figures cover 2,155 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.2% 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 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 | 46 | 84.8% | 109 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 63 | 81.0% | 61 min | 7.94% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,057 | 78.4% | 101 min | 1.61% | B |
| Envoy Air | 836 | 75.9% | 71 min | 3.23% | B− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 153 | 56.8% | 119 min | 3.27% | D− |
Envoy Air cancels 3.2% 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.
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 15 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am426 flights79.9%
- 8am–11am598 flights82.1%
- 11am–2pm278 flights67.7%
- 2pm–5pm465 flights76.6%
- 5pm–8pm384 flights67.6%
- 8pm–5am4 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 82.1% of the time, against 67.6% for the evening window. That is 15 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 598 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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 61.3% on time, 28 points below February, the best at 88.9%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 211 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 79.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.3%. 7 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 45,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%National Airspace System
- 21%Carrier
- 12%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 2.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 45,449 reported delay minutes.
40% 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 45,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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.
Cancellations run at 2.51%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.2% 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 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. 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 73.1% on time across 2,154 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,155 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.
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 July 61.3%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,097 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TUL to ORD questions
How often is TUL to ORD delayed?
About one flight in four arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 23.9% of the 2,155 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 TUL to ORD?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 78.4% on time across 1,057 flights. Envoy Air is at the other end on 75.9%, 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 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 82.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 67.6%, 15 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 TUL to ORD?
July is the weakest month at 61.3% on time, compared with 88.9% in February. Across the year that is 28 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-time record84.8%
- Republic Airways on-time record81.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record78.4%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.