Route reliability record
CMI→ORD
Champaign to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,075
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 135 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four 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 1,075 CMI to ORD flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly CMI to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.9% of the time and Saturday flights 80.8%, against 76.0% 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
76.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,034 completed flights
Avg delay
103 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.81%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
76.0% on time across 1,075 flights
These figures cover 1,075 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.8% 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 CMI 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 | 1,075 | 76.0% | 103 min | 3.81% | B− |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Champaign 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. 1 of the top 2 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. CMI → ORDChampaign to Chicago | Envoy Air | 73.1% | 76.0% | 3.81% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
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 24 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am325 flights86.9%
- 8am–11am47 flights75.6%
- 11am–2pm295 flights77.2%
- 2pm–5pm138 flights70.7%
- 5pm–8pm223 flights62.6%
- 8pm–5am47 flights67.5%
Scale runs 55% to 90%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.6% on time, against 86.9% for the 5am–8am 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 325 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CMI 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 CMI to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 86.9% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 62.6%, a wide gap of 24.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am86.9%
- 8–11am75.6%
- 11am–2pm77.2%
- 2–5pm70.7%
- 5–8pm62.6%
- 8pm–5am67.5%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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 65.9% on time, against 83.8% in September. 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. November was the busiest month here, with 104 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.9%, a spread of 10 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 25,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 25 to one. The split is drawn from 25,463 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 86.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.81%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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
11.8% 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 135 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 72.1% on time across 1,075 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,075 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 3.81% 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. 1,034 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CMI to ORD questions
How often is CMI 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 24.0% of the 1,075 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is CMI to ORD compared with the rest of the country?
76.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of about a point against it. That is worth a B− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CMI to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 62.6%, 24 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 CMI to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 65.9% on time, compared with 83.8% in September. Across the year that is 18 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 CMI — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- CMI to DFW, a related route86.8%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- BOS to ORD, a related route71.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record76.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. CMI to ORD and ORD to CMI 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.