PlainFlights

ORD vs SFO - Airport Comparison

Select two airports to compare on-time performance, delays, cancellations, and top routes using U.S. Department of Transportation Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) data (2020–2025) across all 50 states. See our methodology for how metrics are computed.

Airport A
ORD

Chicago, IL

Chicago, Illinois

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Airport B
SFO

San Francisco, CA

San Francisco, California

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Key Performance Metrics

BTS on-time performance data, 2020–2025 cumulative.

Metric ORD SFO
On-Time Rate (higher is better) 81.0% 81.0%
Avg Delay (lower is better) 81.9 min 72.5 min
Delay Rate (lower is better) 19.0% 19.0%
Cancellation Rate (lower is better) 1.16% 0.85%
Total Flights 3,114,086 1,466,784
Delayed Flights 592,111 278,538
Cancelled Flights 36,132 12,405
Top Delay Cause Late Aircraft Late Aircraft

✓ / ▲ indicates the more favorable value. Data: BTS On-Time Performance, 2020–2025.

Delay Cause Breakdown

ORD - Chicago, IL

Late Aircraft 39.2%
Carrier 33.6%
NAS 19.5%
Weather 7.7%
Security 0.1%

SFO - San Francisco, CA

Late Aircraft 42.0%
Carrier 36.9%
NAS 17.9%
Weather 3.2%
Security 0.1%

Top Routes

Top routes from ORD

Route Flights On-Time
ORD → LGA
New York
56,539 78.2%
LGA → ORD
Chicago
56,521 80.8%
ORD → LAX
Los Angeles
37,020 79.8%
LAX → ORD
Chicago
36,987 84.3%
ORD → DEN
Denver
35,971 79.3%
DEN → ORD
Chicago
35,925 76.8%

Top routes from SFO

Route Flights On-Time
LAX → SFO
San Francisco
63,553 78.7%
SFO → LAX
Los Angeles
63,540 82.9%
SFO → SEA
Seattle
37,671 82.1%
SEA → SFO
San Francisco
37,651 79.1%
JFK → SFO
San Francisco
35,481 81.9%
SFO → JFK
New York
35,481 83.2%

Source: Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), On-Time Performance Data (2020–2025) Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), On-Time Performance Data (2020–2025) On-time rates exclude cancelled and diverted flights. PlainFlights is not affiliated with BTS or the DOT

Every figure on PlainFlights is rendered directly from BTS On-Time Performance data, no number is typed in by an editor. This tool queries live on-time, delay, and cancellation figures for the two selected airports from the dataset. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.