Route reliability record
CMI→ORD
Champaign to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,042
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 135 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.7% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% 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 1,042 CMI to ORD flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly CMI to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.9% of the time and Saturday flights 81.4%, against 75.0% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
75.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,003 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.74%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
75.0% on time across 1,042 flights
These figures cover 1,042 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.8% 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 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 | 1,042 | 75.0% | 85 min | 3.74% | B− |
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 | 79.3% | 81.7% | 2.96% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. CMI → ORDChampaign to Chicago | Envoy Air | 72.2% | 75.0% | 3.74% | 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. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am316 flights84.9%
- 8am–11am47 flights75.6%
- 11am–2pm259 flights77.3%
- 2pm–5pm175 flights70.4%
- 5pm–8pm184 flights60.5%
- 8pm–5am61 flights66.7%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.5% on time, against 84.9% 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 316 flights scheduled in it.
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 81.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.9%. 15 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 48% of the 21,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
48% 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 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 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. The split is drawn from 21,420 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 84.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.74%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.8% 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 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 71.4% on time across 1,042 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. 1,042 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 3.74% 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. 1,003 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 25.0% of the 1,042 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is CMI to ORD compared with the rest of the country?
75.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 points 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 84.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 60.5%, 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 route86.1%
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- BOS to ORD, a related route72.7%
- Envoy Air on-time record75.0%
- 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.
Embed CMI to ORD’s on-time badge on your site
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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.