Route reliability record
TYS→ORD
Knoxville to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,165
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 475 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.0% 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 2,165 TYS to ORD flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 895 at 67.6% on time.
Best time to fly TYS to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.1% of the time and Saturday flights 71.4%, against 68.8% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 85 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,064 completed flights
Avg delay
104 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.97%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
67.6% on time across 895 flights
These figures cover 2,165 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.2% 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 TYS to ORD
The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 43 | 83.7% | 104 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 332 | 82.3% | 105 min | 1.20% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 242 | 70.2% | 74 min | 2.07% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 895 | 67.6% | 112 min | 3.58% | C− |
| PSA Airlines | 653 | 61.7% | 103 min | 6.89% | D− |
PSA Airlines cancels 6.9% 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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Knoxville 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. TYS → ORDKnoxville to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 65.2% | 67.6% | 3.58% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
| 2. TYS → ORDKnoxville to Chicago | PSA Airlines | 57.4% | 61.7% | 6.89% | 11am–2pm, 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 25 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am455 flights83.1%
- 8am–11am331 flights71.1%
- 11am–2pm524 flights69.1%
- 2pm–5pm293 flights62.5%
- 5pm–8pm517 flights57.6%
- 8pm–5am45 flights71.1%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.6% on time, against 83.1% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 524 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter TYS 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 TYS to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 83.1% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 57.6%, a wide gap of 25.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am83.1%
- 8–11am71.1%
- 11am–2pm69.1%
- 2–5pm62.5%
- 5–8pm57.6%
- 8pm–5am71.1%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 34 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 45.1% on time, against 79.5% in April. 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 234 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 71.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 65.7%, a spread of 6 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 67,000 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
34% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 67,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one. The split is drawn from 66,872 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 83.1% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.97%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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
15.2% 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 475 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 runs 66.8% on time across 2,165 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 2,165 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 3.97% 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. 2,064 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TYS to ORD questions
How often is TYS to ORD delayed?
About 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 31.2% of the 2,165 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 TYS to ORD?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 67.6% on time across 895 flights. PSA Airlines is at the other end on 61.7%, a gap of 6 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 TYS to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 83.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 57.6%, 25 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 TYS to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 45.1% on time, compared with 79.5% in April. Across the year that is 34 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 TYS — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- United Airlines on TYS to ORD82.3%
- Envoy Air on TYS to ORD70.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on TYS to ORD67.6%
- PSA Airlines on TYS to ORD61.7%
- TYS to DFW, a related route77.5%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- TYS to ATL, a related route87.8%
- Republic Airways on-time record83.7%
- United Airlines on-time record82.3%
- Envoy Air on-time record70.2%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. TYS to ORD and ORD to TYS 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.