Route reliability record
BMI→ORD
Bloomington to Chicago
- Flights
- 879
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 116 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 879 BMI to ORD flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly BMI to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 86.0%, against 81.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 41 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 853 completed flights
Avg delay
92 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.96%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
81.7% on time across 879 flights
These figures cover 879 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on BMI 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 Air | 879 | 81.7% | 92 min | 2.96% | B |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Bloomington to Chicago
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BMI → ORDBloomington to Chicago | Envoy Air | 79.3% | 81.7% | 2.96% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. PIA → ORDPeoria to Chicago | Envoy Air | 74.5% | 77.9% | 4.31% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 3. CMI → ORDChampaign to Chicago | Envoy Air | 72.2% | 75.0% | 3.74% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 4. PIA → ORDPeoria to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 60.1% | 62.9% | 4.50% | 5am–8am, Sat | OO 4808 17:25 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 14 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am325 flights87.0%
- 8am–11am43 flights86.0%
- 11am–2pm170 flights75.8%
- 2pm–5pm229 flights83.8%
- 5pm–8pm78 flights73.0%
- 8pm–5am34 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.0% of the time, against 73.0% for the evening window. That is 14 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 325 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 30 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.
December is the weak month at 63.6% on time, against 93.5% in May. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.0%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 14,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Extreme weather
- 19%National Airspace System
- 11%Carrier
Extreme weather accounts for 23% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 3.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 14,370 reported delay minutes.
47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit.
Cancellations run at 2.96%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 116 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.1% on time across 879 flights, 5 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 879 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: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.96% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 853 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BMI to ORD questions
How often is BMI to ORD delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.3% of the 879 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is BMI to ORD compared with the rest of the country?
81.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 4 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BMI to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 73.0%, 14 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 December delays on BMI to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 63.6% on time, compared with 93.5% in May. Across the year that is 30 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
- ORD to BMI — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- BMI to DFW, a related route88.9%
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- BOS to ORD, a related route72.7%
- Envoy Air on-time record81.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. BMI to ORD and ORD to BMI are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.