Route reliability record
TVC→ORD
Traverse City to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,616
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 224 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 2,616 flights, of which Republic Airways flew 478 at 80.9% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 80.9% on time across 478 flights.
Key figures
On time
69.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,473 completed flights
Avg delay
105 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.31%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Republic
80.9% on time across 478 flights
These figures cover 2,616 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.6% 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 TVC to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 80.9% of the time; PSA Airlines manages 61.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 377 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 188 | 81.4% | 79 min | 2.66% | B |
| Republic Airways | 478 | 80.9% | 84 min | 3.35% | B− |
| United Airlines | 457 | 74.0% | 67 min | 3.06% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,116 | 62.3% | 121 min | 5.47% | D− |
| PSA Airlines | 377 | 61.7% | 109 min | 11.41% | D− |
PSA Airlines cancels 11.4% 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.
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 35 points, against 19 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am708 flights82.2%
- 8am–11am188 flights82.3%
- 11am–2pm440 flights70.7%
- 2pm–5pm576 flights66.4%
- 5pm–8pm564 flights53.9%
- 8pm–5am140 flights47.5%
Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 47.5% on time, against 82.3% for the 8am–11am 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 708 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 35 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 49.3% on time, against 84.4% 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 286 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 72.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 64.9%. 8 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 80,000 reported delay minutes.
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 14%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 79,601 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 82.3% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.31%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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. 14.6% 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.
At 224 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 66.8% on time across 2,617 flights, within 2 points 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 2,616 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 delay figures matter less here than the 5.31% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 2,473 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TVC to ORD questions
How often is TVC to ORD delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 30.8% of the 2,616 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
Which airline is most reliable on TVC to ORD?
Republic Airways leads at 80.9% on time across 478 flights. PSA Airlines is at the other end on 61.7%, a gap of 19 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 TVC to ORD?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 82.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 47.5%, 35 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 TVC to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 49.3% on time, compared with 84.4% in May. Across the year that is 35 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 TVC — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on-time record81.4%
- Republic Airways on-time record80.9%
- United Airlines on-time record74.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. TVC to ORD and ORD to TVC 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.