Route reliability record
BMI→ORD
Bloomington to Chicago
- Flights
- 879
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 116 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about four flights in five arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. 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 86.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 87.5%, against 81.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 43 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 848 completed flights
Avg delay
107 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.53%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
81.6% on time across 879 flights
These figures cover 879 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 | 81.6% | 107 min | 3.53% | B− |
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.
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 | 78.7% | 81.6% | 3.53% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. PIA → ORDPeoria to Chicago | Envoy Air | 73.6% | 77.2% | 4.60% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 3. CMI → ORDChampaign to Chicago | Envoy Air | 73.1% | 76.0% | 3.81% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 4. PIA → ORDPeoria to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 61.9% | 65.0% | 4.70% | 5am–8am, Sat | OO 4808 17:19 |
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 13 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am325 flights86.9%
- 8am–11am43 flights86.0%
- 11am–2pm193 flights74.2%
- 2pm–5pm167 flights86.4%
- 5pm–8pm117 flights76.4%
- 8pm–5am34 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 74.2% on time against 86.9% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 325 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BMI 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 BMI to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 86.9% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 74.2%, a wide gap of 12.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am86.9%
- 8–11am86.0%
- 11am–2pm74.2%
- 2–5pm86.4%
- 5–8pm76.4%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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 87.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 76.7%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 17,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Extreme weather
- 20%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 22% 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 16,650 reported delay minutes.
44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 to one.
Cancellations run at 3.53%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
9.9% 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.
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 3.53% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; 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. 848 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 18.4% of the 879 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is BMI to ORD compared with the rest of the country?
81.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, 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 86.9% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 74.2%, 13 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 route89.3%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- BOS to ORD, a related route71.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record81.6%
- 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.
Embed BMI to ORD’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.