Route reliability record
DLH→ORD
Duluth to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,239
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 397 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% 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 1,239 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 81.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 74.3%, against 69.0% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 83 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,175 completed flights
Avg delay
106 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.76%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
68.3% on time across 1,116 flights
These figures cover 1,239 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.0% 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 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 | 123 | 75.2% | 89 min | 4.07% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,116 | 68.3% | 108 min | 4.84% | 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.
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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 23 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am239 flights78.4%
- 8am–11am228 flights81.7%
- 11am–2pm293 flights67.3%
- 2pm–5pm360 flights59.1%
- 5pm–8pm119 flights58.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.7% on time, against 81.7% 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 360 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DLH 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 DLH to ORD, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 81.7% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 58.7%, a wide gap of 23.0 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am78.4%
- 8–11am81.7%
- 11am–2pm67.3%
- 2–5pm59.1%
- 5–8pm58.7%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 50% 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.
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 74.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 64.0%, 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 39,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 12%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 38,574 reported delay minutes.
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 39,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations run at 4.76%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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
14.0% 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 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 65.3% on time across 1,238 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 1,239 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 4.76% 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. 1,175 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 31.0% of the 1,239 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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?
69.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 8 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 81.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 58.7%, 23 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
- Republic Airways on DLH to ORD75.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on DLH to ORD68.3%
- DLH to MSP, a related route82.5%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- BOS to ORD, a related route71.9%
- Republic Airways on-time record75.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record68.3%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.