Route reliability record
TUS→ORD
Tucson to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,039
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,437 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 1,039 TUS to ORD flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 462 at 77.6% on time.
Best time to fly TUS to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.6% of the time and Thursday flights 81.1%, against 75.9% for the route overall.
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
75.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,012 completed flights
Avg delay
94 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.54%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
77.6% on time across 462 flights
These figures cover 1,039 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.9% 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 TUS to ORD
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 19 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 462 | 77.6% | 65 min | 1.52% | B |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 77 | 75.3% | 95 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 481 | 73.3% | 118 min | 1.87% | C |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 77.6%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Tucson 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. TUS → ORDTucson to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 76.4% | 77.6% | 1.52% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 2. TUS → ORDTucson to Chicago | American Airlines | 71.9% | 73.3% | 1.87% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 29 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am327 flights85.6%
- 8am–11am69 flights81.8%
- 11am–2pm611 flights71.1%
- 2pm–5pm32 flights56.2%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 85.6% of the time, against 56.2% for the afternoon window. That is 29 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 611 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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.
Delays peak in September, when the on-time rate falls to 68.3%. February is the strongest month at 87.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 19 points. April was the busiest month here, with 114 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 81.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 67.8%. 13 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 23,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
35% 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 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 23,020 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 8,803 of the 23,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.54% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.06%.
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. 10.9% 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 1,437 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 68.9% on time across 1,041 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,039 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. 1,039 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 75.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,012 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TUS to ORD questions
How often is TUS 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 24.1% of the 1,039 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 TUS to ORD?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 77.6% on time across 462 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 73.3%, a gap of 4 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 TUS to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.6% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 56.2%, 29 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 September delays on TUS to ORD?
September is the weakest month at 68.3% on time, compared with 87.5% in February. Across the year that is 19 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 TUS — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on TUS to ORD77.6%
- American Airlines on TUS to ORD73.3%
- TUS to PHX, a related route83.8%
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- TUS to DEN, a related route82.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record100.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record77.6%
- United Airlines on-time record75.3%
- 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. TUS to ORD and ORD to TUS 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.