Carrier route record

OHTYS→ORD

PSA Airlines · Knoxville to Chicago

Flights: 834
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 38%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.

PSA on TYS to ORD carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 6.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, a little over half of flights arrive on time, worth a D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 834 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so PSA on TYS to ORD runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 170 extra late arrivals.

On time

60.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 776 completed flights

Avg delay

113 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

6.47%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

68.2%

Every carrier on TYS to ORD, 2,220 flights

These figures cover 834 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 20.7% 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

PSA against every carrier on TYS to ORD

PSA flew 834 of the 2,220 flights on TYS to ORD, about 38% of it. Its 60.6% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 68.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 86.4% to PSA at 60.6%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on TYS to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlinesthin sample	317	86.4%	85 min	2.52%	A
Envoy Airthin sample	175	75.9%	57 min	1.71%	B
Republic Airwaysthin sample	79	70.9%	84 min	0.00%	C+
SkyWest Airlines	815	66.7%	110 min	2.94%	C
PSA Airlines (this page)	834	60.6%	113 min	6.47%	D−

Departure window

When PSA runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 24 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am79 flights65.8%
8am–11am228 flights68.8%
11am–2pm262 flights66.8%
2pm–5pm55 flights45.8%
5pm–8pm209 flights44.7%
8pm–5am1 flights—

Scale runs 35% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 44.7% on time, against 68.8% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 262 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

PSA on TYS to ORD through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.April best, December worst

December is the weak month at 42.0% on time, against 84.3% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 91 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 67.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 56.0%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why PSA runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 35,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Late-arriving aircraft
46%
Carrier
34%
National Airspace System
13%
Extreme weather
8%

46% 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 35,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 34,578 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 68.8% on time here.

Cancellations run at 6.47%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in fifteen 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 costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 20.7% 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 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 60.2% on time across 834 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 834 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.

What to do with this

Booking PSA on TYS to ORD

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.47% 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. 776 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures