Route reliability record
TVC→ORD
Traverse City to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,863
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 224 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% 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 2,863 TVC to ORD flights, of which Republic Airways flew 533 at 79.1% on time.
Best time to fly TVC to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 74.7%, against 71.3% for the route overall.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 79.1% on time across 533 flights.
Key figures
On time
71.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,722 completed flights
Avg delay
112 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.79%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Republic
79.1% on time across 533 flights
These figures cover 2,863 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.1% 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 TVC to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 79.1% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 66.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,210 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 307 | 84.3% | 81 min | 2.28% | B |
| Republic Airways | 533 | 79.1% | 94 min | 3.56% | B− |
| United Airlines | 459 | 73.3% | 86 min | 1.96% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,210 | 66.2% | 128 min | 5.12% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 354 | 62.1% | 112 min | 11.30% | D− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.1% 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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Traverse City 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. TVC → ORDTraverse City to Chicago | Republic Airways | 76.3% | 79.1% | 3.56% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. TVC → ORDTraverse City to Chicago | United Airlines | 71.9% | 73.3% | 1.96% | 5am–8am, Mon | — |
| 3. TVC → ORDTraverse City to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 62.8% | 66.2% | 5.12% | 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 30 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am755 flights81.8%
- 8am–11am257 flights80.4%
- 11am–2pm497 flights72.4%
- 2pm–5pm644 flights69.6%
- 5pm–8pm584 flights57.8%
- 8pm–5am126 flights51.4%
Scale runs 45% to 85%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 51.4% on time, against 81.8% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 755 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter TVC 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 TVC to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 81.8% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 51.4%, a wide gap of 30.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am81.8%
- 8–11am80.4%
- 11am–2pm72.4%
- 2–5pm69.6%
- 5–8pm57.8%
- 8pm–5am51.4%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
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. July was the busiest month here, with 367 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.9%, a spread of 9 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 87,000 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 15%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 2.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 87,045 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 81.8% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.79%, against 1.89% 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
14.1% 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.
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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 67.4% on time across 2,863 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 2,863 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 delay figures matter less here than the 4.79% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 2,722 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 arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 28.7% of the 2,863 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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 79.1% on time across 533 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 66.2%, a gap of 13 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 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 81.8% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 51.4%, 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 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 TVC to ORD84.3%
- Republic Airways on TVC to ORD79.1%
- United Airlines on TVC to ORD73.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on TVC to ORD66.2%
- PSA Airlines on TVC to ORD62.1%
- TVC to DTW, a related route76.1%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- BOS to ORD, a related route71.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record84.3%
- Republic Airways on-time record79.1%
- United Airlines on-time record73.3%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.
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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.