Route reliability record
BGR→ORD
Bangor to Chicago
- Flights
- 712
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 978 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 712 BGR to ORD flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly BGR to ORD: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.6% of the time and Thursday flights 78.6%, against 74.6% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 698 completed flights
Avg delay
111 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.69%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
—
No carrier clears the floor
These figures cover 712 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on BGR to ORD
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 80 | 90.0% | 64 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 170 | 75.6% | 67 min | 1.18% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 195 | 73.0% | 93 min | 2.56% | C |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 257 | 72.1% | 157 min | 1.95% | C |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 10 | 30.0% | 103 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 40 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am231 flights86.9%
- 8am–11am45 flights95.6%
- 11am–2pm162 flights75.9%
- 2pm–5pm153 flights62.8%
- 5pm–8pm121 flights55.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 55.9% on time, against 95.6% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 231 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BGR to ORD by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On BGR to ORD, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 95.6% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 55.9%, a wide gap of 39.7 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am86.9%
- 8–11am95.6%
- 11am–2pm75.9%
- 2–5pm62.8%
- 5–8pm55.9%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 45% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
August is the worst month at 55.0% on time, 28 points below May, the best at 82.5%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 78.6% on time and Saturday the weakest at 70.8%, a spread of 8 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 20,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 7,178 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 19,667 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 95.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.69% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
11.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 978 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 712 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in ORD after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 712 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 74.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 698 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BGR to ORD questions
How often is BGR to ORD delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 25.4% of the 712 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is BGR to ORD compared with the rest of the country?
74.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 3 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BGR to ORD?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 95.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 55.9%, 40 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are August delays on BGR to ORD?
August is the weakest month at 55.0% on time, compared with 82.5% in May. Across the year that is 28 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on BGR to ORD75.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on BGR to ORD73.0%
- American Airlines on BGR to ORD72.1%
- BGR to DCA, a related route69.3%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- BOS to ORD, a related route71.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record90.0%
- Republic Airways on-time record75.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record73.0%
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
The reverse direction, ORD to BGR, is not among the 2,978 routes with a page of their own.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.