Route profile
PIT→ORD
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Pittsburgh to Chicago, 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 50% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 10,277 flights. How this is calculated
PIT → ORD arrives on time 82.1% of the time; the return trip, ORD → PIT, arrives on time 77.3% of the time, a 4.8-point gap between the two directions of the same city pair.
PIT → ORD spends 33.5 minutes on the ground on a 413-mile trip: 15.9 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at PIT and 17.6 minutes from touchdown to gate at ORD.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
What stands out
Every day of the week performs about the same on this route, steadier than 93% of 4,467 comparable routes.
84.4% on time on the best day (Saturday) against 80.0% on the worst (Friday).
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 4,467 in the comparison.
Why PIT → ORD flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
PIT → ORD cancelled 160 of 10,277 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 64. The reason filed most often was extreme weather, 62.5% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 103 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 160 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.
100 cancellations, 62.5% of the total.
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
30 cancellations, 18.8% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
30 cancellations, 18.8% 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.
160 coded cancellations were recorded on PIT → ORD; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
38 min late
against a median of 9 min early
Percentiles over 10,277 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at ORD after arriving from PIT.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 32% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 17% | High risk |
| 60 min | 12% | Some risk |
| 90 min | 7.2% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 5.0% | Low 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 1.56% of the time and diverts 0.11% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 10,106 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 38 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 10,277 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
PIT → ORD flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 90.0% of the time, against 63.5% for 6–9 PM departures, a gap of 26.5 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 5 AM: too few flights to score
- 6 AM: 90.7% on time from 858 flights
- 7 AM: 90.7% on time from 1,206 flights
- 8 AM: 88.1% on time from 1,280 flights
- 9 AM: 89.2% on time from 503 flights
- 10 AM: 90.1% on time from 631 flights
- 11 AM: 87.6% on time from 1,145 flights
- 12 PM: 82.2% on time from 297 flights
- 1 PM: 84.3% on time from 243 flights
- 2 PM: 81.1% on time from 914 flights
- 3 PM: 74.0% on time from 235 flights
- 4 PM: 76.9% on time from 703 flights
- 5 PM: 66.1% on time from 1,150 flights
- 6 PM: 66.0% on time from 503 flights
- 7 PM: 65.7% on time from 265 flights
- 8 PM: 54.9% on time from 223 flights
- 9 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Departure windows with fewer than 120 flights are not scored.
Why PIT → ORD runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s 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 PIT → ORD. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on PIT → ORD, at 34.7%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 90.0% of the time and 6–9 PM departures 63.5%.
How this route holds up in bad weather
July 2023 – July 2026
The harder-hit end is ORD, where the flight lands. Its figure counts departures from ORD, so it says more about how that airport copes than about this route. Bad weather cancels 5.5 times the normal rate at ORD against 2.4 times at PIT. Cancelled in bad weather against normal hours: PIT 3.2% against 1.3%, ORD 6.5% against 1.2%. 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 | PIT | ORD |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled in bad weather | 3.2% | 6.5% |
| Cancelled in normal hours | 1.3% | 1.2% |
| Arrived on time, bad weather | 72.3% | 55.7% |
| Arrived on time, normal hours | 83.7% | 77.1% |
| Departures in bad weather | 19,127 | 104,455 |
Of the carriers on this route, United Airlines (1.2% cancelled against 3.6% for the other carriers at PIT) cancelled the fewest departures from PIT in bad weather and Republic Airways (5.2% cancelled against 2.5% for the other carriers at PIT) the most. 2 more carriers fly this route but has too few bad-weather departures from PIT to compare.
This route’s airlines in bad weather at PIT
All departures from PIT| Airline | Bad-weather departures | Cancelled | Other carriers |
|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 1,549 | 1.2%below the others | 3.6% |
| American Airlines | 2,585 | 2.6%about level | 3.2% |
| Republic Airways | 4,951 | 5.2%above the others | 2.5% |
These are airport figures, not route figures: every scheduled departure from PIT and ORD, to any destination, in hours the weather report called bad. The airline rows count each carrier’s departures from PIT on every route.
Weather source and limits. In full: PIT (airlines), ORD, 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 | 3,502 | 81.5% | 1.34% | -6 min | 7.3% |
| Republic Airways | 3,482 | 87.7% | 1.26% | -14 min | 4.8% |
| American Airlines | 1,858 | 75.7% | 2.31% | -7 min | 11.3% |
| Envoy Air | 948 | 80.3% | 1.58% | -7 min | 6.3% |
| SkyWest Airlines | 487 | 72.4% | 2.26% | -5 min | 11.6% |
United Airlines flew 34.1% of the 10,277 flights listed. American Airlines cancelled 2.31% of its flights here against 1.26% for Republic Airways.
Republic Airways arrived on time 15.3 percentage points more often than SkyWest 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| YX3461 Republic Airways | 8:50 AM | 1,061 | 91.6% |
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Saturday is historically the most reliable day and Friday the least, a gap of 4.4 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 77.7%
- Feb: 88.6%
- Mar: 82.5%
- Apr: 83.1%
- May: 83.5%
- Jun: 78.1%
- Jul: 75.4%
- Aug: 81.8%
- Sep: 86.7%
- Oct: 85.8%
- Nov: 83.4%
- Dec: 80.9%
July is historically the weakest month and February the strongest, a spread of 13.2 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 75.7% from 209 flights
- August 2023: 87.5% from 245 flights
- September 2023: 87.0% from 224 flights
- October 2023: 86.7% from 240 flights
- November 2023: 87.4% from 200 flights
- December 2023: 94.9% from 217 flights
- January 2024: 82.8% from 215 flights
- February 2024: 96.7% from 214 flights
- March 2024: 90.7% from 249 flights
- April 2024: 85.5% from 242 flights
- May 2024: 79.6% from 242 flights
- June 2024: 77.8% from 226 flights
- July 2024: 77.4% from 263 flights
- August 2024: 73.4% from 292 flights
- September 2024: 92.2% from 270 flights
- October 2024: 90.5% from 264 flights
- November 2024: 87.0% from 239 flights
- December 2024: 83.3% from 240 flights
- January 2025: 78.9% from 239 flights
- February 2025: 84.3% from 216 flights
- March 2025: 86.3% from 265 flights
- April 2025: 88.6% from 277 flights
- May 2025: 86.2% from 321 flights
- June 2025: 76.0% from 328 flights
- July 2025: 72.8% from 337 flights
- August 2025: 84.9% from 343 flights
- September 2025: 82.3% from 345 flights
- October 2025: 81.9% from 372 flights
- November 2025: 78.2% from 332 flights
- December 2025: 68.9% from 303 flights
- January 2026: 72.5% from 271 flights
- February 2026: 85.5% from 257 flights
- March 2026: 71.3% from 281 flights
- April 2026: 76.9% from 347 flights
- May 2026: 83.7% from 396 flights
- June 2026: 80.2% from 366 flights
- July 2026: 76.3% from 390 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 78.8% against 82.9% in the 12 months before — declining by 4.1 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 10,277 PIT → ORD 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