Route profile
ORD→RDU
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Chicago to Raleigh–Durham, 646 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 10,064 flights. How this is calculated
ORD → RDU arrives on time 76.8% of the time; the return trip, RDU → ORD, arrives on time 78.9% of the time, a 2.0-point gap between the two directions of the same city pair.
ORD → RDU spends 33.2 minutes on the ground on a 646-mile trip: 25.9 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at ORD and 7.4 minutes from touchdown to gate at RDU.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Why ORD → RDU flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
ORD → RDU cancelled 143 of 10,064 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 70. The reason filed most often was extreme weather, 72.7% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 97 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 143 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.
104 cancellations, 72.7% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
23 cancellations, 16.1% of the total.
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
16 cancellations, 11.2% 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.
143 coded cancellations were recorded on ORD → RDU; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
53 min late
against a median of 5 min early
Percentiles over 10,064 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at RDU after arriving from ORD.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 39% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 22% | High risk |
| 60 min | 15% | High risk |
| 90 min | 8.7% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 5.3% | 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 1.42% of the time and diverts 0.18% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 9,903 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 53 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 10,064 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
ORD → RDU flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 86.9% of the time, against 65.6% for 6–9 PM departures, a gap of 21.3 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 5 AM: too few flights to score
- 6 AM: 89.3% on time from 151 flights
- 7 AM: 85.8% on time from 807 flights
- 8 AM: 87.4% on time from 1,093 flights
- 9 AM: 85.2% on time from 679 flights
- 10 AM: 80.2% on time from 926 flights
- 11 AM: 82.2% on time from 747 flights
- 12 PM: 82.5% on time from 308 flights
- 1 PM: 74.7% on time from 449 flights
- 2 PM: 79.0% on time from 1,242 flights
- 3 PM: 73.4% on time from 491 flights
- 4 PM: 63.9% on time from 209 flights
- 5 PM: 63.5% on time from 255 flights
- 6 PM: 65.9% on time from 1,730 flights
- 7 PM: 79.5% on time from 328 flights
- 8 PM: 56.5% on time from 569 flights
- 9 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Departure windows with fewer than 120 flights are not scored.
Why ORD → RDU 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
screening or terminal security incidents
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for ORD → RDU. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on ORD → RDU, at 48.2%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 86.9% 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 2.6 times at RDU. Cancelled in bad weather against normal hours: ORD 6.5% against 1.2%, RDU 4.1% against 1.6%. 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 | RDU |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled in bad weather | 6.5% | 4.1% |
| Cancelled in normal hours | 1.2% | 1.6% |
| Arrived on time, bad weather | 55.7% | 74.9% |
| Arrived on time, normal hours | 77.1% | 79.9% |
| Departures in bad weather | 104,455 | 16,672 |
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% |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,047 | 6.0%about level | 7.5% |
| 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 RDU, 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), RDU, 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 | 3,756 | 78.7% | 0.72% | -4 min | 7.4% |
| Republic Airways | 2,178 | 80.6% | 2.02% | -8 min | 7.2% |
| American Airlines | 2,080 | 66.9% | 1.73% | 0 min | 15.0% |
| Envoy Air | 1,508 | 81.5% | 1.46% | -8 min | 5.1% |
| SkyWest Airlines | 292 | 81.1% | 2.05% | -6 min | 7.3% |
| Frontier Airlines | 248 | 65.5% | 3.23% | 3 min | 18.9% |
United Airlines flew 37.3% of the 10,062 flights listed. Frontier Airlines cancelled 3.23% of its flights here against 0.72% for United Airlines.
Envoy Air arrived on time 16.0 percentage points more often than Frontier Airlines on this route.
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Tuesday is historically the most reliable day and Friday the least, a gap of 6.2 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 76.0%
- Feb: 80.5%
- Mar: 74.4%
- Apr: 78.1%
- May: 78.2%
- Jun: 71.6%
- Jul: 68.5%
- Aug: 72.8%
- Sep: 81.6%
- Oct: 82.1%
- Nov: 83.7%
- Dec: 77.8%
July is historically the weakest month and November the strongest, a spread of 15.2 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 69.8% from 227 flights
- August 2023: 77.1% from 244 flights
- September 2023: 80.6% from 238 flights
- October 2023: 84.3% from 236 flights
- November 2023: 90.1% from 243 flights
- December 2023: 84.7% from 238 flights
- January 2024: 70.9% from 228 flights
- February 2024: 85.4% from 213 flights
- March 2024: 80.2% from 243 flights
- April 2024: 82.7% from 244 flights
- May 2024: 73.3% from 274 flights
- June 2024: 67.3% from 267 flights
- July 2024: 69.2% from 281 flights
- August 2024: 68.8% from 292 flights
- September 2024: 82.5% from 294 flights
- October 2024: 88.3% from 308 flights
- November 2024: 87.7% from 269 flights
- December 2024: 83.7% from 264 flights
- January 2025: 85.0% from 231 flights
- February 2025: 81.4% from 214 flights
- March 2025: 77.3% from 257 flights
- April 2025: 83.7% from 258 flights
- May 2025: 78.9% from 298 flights
- June 2025: 71.3% from 270 flights
- July 2025: 64.8% from 277 flights
- August 2025: 73.4% from 273 flights
- September 2025: 81.6% from 266 flights
- October 2025: 74.5% from 328 flights
- November 2025: 74.7% from 308 flights
- December 2025: 66.7% from 291 flights
- January 2026: 71.8% from 232 flights
- February 2026: 75.3% from 244 flights
- March 2026: 67.4% from 316 flights
- April 2026: 70.8% from 356 flights
- May 2026: 81.3% from 374 flights
- June 2026: 75.4% from 327 flights
- July 2026: 70.0% from 341 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 73.6% against 79.3% in the 12 months before — declining by 5.7 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 10,064 ORD → RDU 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