Route reliability record
DLH→ORD
Duluth to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,216
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 397 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.0% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,216 DLH to ORD flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
Best time to fly DLH to ORD: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 76.0%, against 68.5% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 91 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,164 completed flights
Avg delay
104 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.95%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
68.1% on time across 1,133 flights
These figures cover 1,216 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.7% 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 DLH 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 83 | 73.8% | 77 min | 3.61% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,133 | 68.1% | 106 min | 3.97% | C− |
Flight by flight
Flights on DLH to ORD
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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 31 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–8am177 flights76.4%
- 8am–11am303 flights81.9%
- 11am–2pm293 flights64.4%
- 2pm–5pm359 flights59.9%
- 5pm–8pm84 flights51.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.4% on time, against 81.9% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 359 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.
January is the weak month at 52.5% on time, against 82.6% in October. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 136 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 76.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 64.0%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 38,000 reported delay minutes.
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 17%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 17% 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 2.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 38,307 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 81.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.95%, 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. 13.7% 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 397 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 64.6% on time across 1,216 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,216 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
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 3.95% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,164 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DLH to ORD questions
How often is DLH to ORD delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 31.5% of the 1,216 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is DLH to ORD compared with the rest of the country?
68.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 9 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DLH to ORD?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 81.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 51.4%, 31 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 January delays on DLH to ORD?
January is the weakest month at 52.5% on time, compared with 82.6% in October. 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 DLH — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- DLH to MSP, a related route82.6%
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- BOS to ORD, a related route72.7%
- Republic Airways on-time record73.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record68.1%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. DLH to ORD and ORD to DLH 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.