Route profile
ORD→PIT
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Chicago to Pittsburgh, 413 miles.
Right now
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Route reliability
July 2023 – July 2026
Better than 33% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 10,269 flights. How this is calculated
ORD → PIT arrives on time 77.3% of the time; the return trip, PIT → ORD, arrives on time 82.1% of the time, a 4.8-point gap between the two directions of the same city pair.
ORD → PIT spends 31.2 minutes on the ground on a 413-mile trip: 25.0 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at ORD and 6.2 minutes from touchdown to gate at PIT.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
What stands out
The airline matters unusually much on this route, a wider carrier-to-carrier gap than 94% of 2,692 comparable routes.
Republic Airways arrived on time 83.5% of the time, against 63.5% for American Airlines, flying the exact same route.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Ranked against every other route with the same kind of figure and at least 2,692 in the comparison.
Why ORD → PIT flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
ORD → PIT cancelled 159 of 10,269 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 65. The reason filed most often was extreme weather, 61.6% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 105 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 159 cancelled departures carrying a reason code.
What each reason means
Conditions the carrier judged severe enough to stop the flight: a blizzard, a hurricane, a line of thunderstorms.
98 cancellations, 61.6% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
39 cancellations, 24.5% of the total.
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
22 cancellations, 13.8% of the total.
A terminal evacuation, a security breach, screening equipment failure, or screening queues over 29 minutes.
0 cancellations, 0.0% of the total.
Reason codes are the operating airline’s own filing with US DOT, not an independent finding of fault. Ordinary bad weather is filed under air traffic, so weather’s full share is larger than its bar.
159 coded cancellations were recorded on ORD → PIT; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
52 min late
against a median of 6 min early
Percentiles over 10,269 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at PIT after arriving from ORD.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 38% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 22% | High risk |
| 60 min | 15% | High risk |
| 90 min | 8.6% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 5.7% | Some risk |
This is one leg of a connection. Gate changes and the next flight's own schedule matter too. And a connection can fail before delay is even the question — this route cancels 1.55% of the time and diverts 0.10% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 10,100 arrivals on this route that landed later than the connection time less 30 minutes to reach the next gate.
The worst tenth of arrivals on this route land at least 52 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 10,269 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
ORD → PIT flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 86.2% of the time, against 65.6% for 6–9 PM departures, a gap of 20.6 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 6 AM: too few flights to score
- 7 AM: 88.6% on time from 1,044 flights
- 8 AM: 82.4% on time from 677 flights
- 9 AM: 83.1% on time from 355 flights
- 10 AM: 84.8% on time from 1,148 flights
- 11 AM: too few flights to score
- 12 PM: 81.8% on time from 610 flights
- 1 PM: 73.4% on time from 591 flights
- 2 PM: 78.5% on time from 1,374 flights
- 3 PM: 71.3% on time from 378 flights
- 4 PM: 70.3% on time from 150 flights
- 5 PM: 68.9% on time from 418 flights
- 6 PM: 65.3% on time from 1,783 flights
- 7 PM: 77.1% on time from 162 flights
- 8 PM: 61.6% on time from 288 flights
- 9 PM: 80.8% on time from 1,217 flights
- 10 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Why ORD → PIT runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for ORD → PIT. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on ORD → PIT, at 51.0%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 86.2% of the time and 6–9 PM departures 65.6%.
How this route holds up in bad weather
July 2023 – July 2026
The harder-hit end is the one the flight leaves from, where a cancellation keeps it from departing at all. Bad weather cancels 5.5 times the normal rate at ORD against 2.4 times at PIT. Cancelled in bad weather against normal hours: ORD 6.5% against 1.2%, PIT 3.2% against 1.3%. Flights that did leave ORD in bad weather arrived on time 55.7% of the time, against 77.1% in normal hours.
Bad weather and normal hours at the airports
Scheduled departures, July 2023 – July 2026| Departures from | ORD | PIT |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled in bad weather | 6.5% | 3.2% |
| Cancelled in normal hours | 1.2% | 1.3% |
| Arrived on time, bad weather | 55.7% | 72.3% |
| Arrived on time, normal hours | 77.1% | 83.7% |
| Departures in bad weather | 104,455 | 19,127 |
Of the carriers on this route, United Airlines (3.5% cancelled against 7.4% for the other carriers at ORD) cancelled the fewest departures from ORD in bad weather and SkyWest Airlines (10.7% cancelled against 5.8% for the other carriers at ORD) the most.
This route’s airlines in bad weather at ORD
All departures from ORD| Airline | Bad-weather departures | Cancelled | Other carriers |
|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 31,269 | 3.5%below the others | 7.4% |
| American Airlines | 17,789 | 5.4%below the others | 6.7% |
| Republic Airways | 9,471 | 8.1%above the others | 6.5% |
| Envoy Air | 14,228 | 8.6%above the others | 6.9% |
| SkyWest Airlines | 21,044 | 10.7%above the others | 5.8% |
These are airport figures, not route figures: every scheduled departure from ORD and PIT, to any destination, in hours the weather report called bad. The airline rows count each carrier’s departures from ORD on every route.
Weather source and limits. In full: ORD (airlines), PIT, What Weather Costs Each Airport, Who Cancels More When the Weather Turns, Airports That Change Places When Weather Turns.
Airlines on this route
Carriers with at least 200 flights, by the airline that operated each one.
| Carrier | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 3,506 | 77.9% | 0.94% | -5 min | 7.8% |
| Republic Airways | 3,473 | 83.5% | 1.76% | -11 min | 6.4% |
| American Airlines | 1,858 | 63.5% | 2.21% | 2 min | 17.2% |
| Envoy Air | 946 | 81.3% | 1.48% | -4 min | 4.3% |
| SkyWest Airlines | 486 | 72.9% | 2.06% | -2 min | 8.0% |
United Airlines flew 34.1% of the 10,269 flights listed. American Airlines cancelled 2.21% of its flights here against 0.94% for United Airlines.
Republic Airways arrived on time 20.0 percentage points more often than American Airlines on this route.
Flights on this route
Flight numbers with at least 600 operations here and still on the schedule.
| Flight | Scheduled | Operations | On time |
|---|---|---|---|
| YX3464 Republic Airways | 9:05 PM | 977 | 82.8% |
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Tuesday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 7.6 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 75.2%
- Feb: 82.0%
- Mar: 75.9%
- Apr: 79.6%
- May: 79.6%
- Jun: 72.0%
- Jul: 69.4%
- Aug: 75.8%
- Sep: 84.2%
- Oct: 81.8%
- Nov: 80.1%
- Dec: 74.9%
July is historically the weakest month and September the strongest, a spread of 14.8 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 65.3% from 209 flights
- August 2023: 77.4% from 244 flights
- September 2023: 82.1% from 224 flights
- October 2023: 82.8% from 239 flights
- November 2023: 83.1% from 201 flights
- December 2023: 87.4% from 214 flights
- January 2024: 75.0% from 215 flights
- February 2024: 87.7% from 213 flights
- March 2024: 87.5% from 249 flights
- April 2024: 85.1% from 243 flights
- May 2024: 74.1% from 243 flights
- June 2024: 68.0% from 226 flights
- July 2024: 72.5% from 263 flights
- August 2024: 68.8% from 291 flights
- September 2024: 84.8% from 271 flights
- October 2024: 84.0% from 263 flights
- November 2024: 83.2% from 239 flights
- December 2024: 77.4% from 240 flights
- January 2025: 81.9% from 239 flights
- February 2025: 81.3% from 214 flights
- March 2025: 81.1% from 265 flights
- April 2025: 82.5% from 277 flights
- May 2025: 82.8% from 322 flights
- June 2025: 69.7% from 327 flights
- July 2025: 69.2% from 338 flights
- August 2025: 80.6% from 343 flights
- September 2025: 85.2% from 345 flights
- October 2025: 79.7% from 372 flights
- November 2025: 75.9% from 329 flights
- December 2025: 64.1% from 304 flights
- January 2026: 69.3% from 271 flights
- February 2026: 77.7% from 257 flights
- March 2026: 60.1% from 281 flights
- April 2026: 73.2% from 346 flights
- May 2026: 80.5% from 397 flights
- June 2026: 76.6% from 365 flights
- July 2026: 69.6% from 390 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 74.8% against 78.4% in the 12 months before — declining by 3.6 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 10,269 ORD → PIT flight records from the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, covering July 2023 – July 2026. Late means 15 or more minutes past scheduled arrival; cancelled and diverted flights are left out of on-time rates.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: How Long a Layover Needs to Be · Two Airlines on One Route · Best Time of Day to Fly From Major US Airports
Analysis last recomputed