Route reliability record
FWA→ORD
Fort Wayne to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,695
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 157 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.6% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three 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 2,695 flights, with a median arrival 1 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 114 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,567 completed flights
Avg delay
102 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.56%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
65.6% on time across 2,361 flights
These figures cover 2,695 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.6% 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 FWA 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 Airthin sample | 272 | 76.3% | 67 min | 3.68% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 2,361 | 65.6% | 105 min | 4.62% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 62 | 46.6% | 103 min | 6.45% | F− |
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 33 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–8am737 flights80.9%
- 8am–11am171 flights75.8%
- 11am–2pm617 flights70.7%
- 2pm–5pm477 flights55.4%
- 5pm–8pm656 flights50.8%
- 8pm–5am37 flights48.4%
Scale runs 40% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 48.4% on time, against 80.9% 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 737 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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 50.8% on time, against 75.8% in June. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 278 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 71.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 58.5%. 13 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 88,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Carrier
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 36,000 of the 88,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 88,215 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 80.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.56%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 16.6% 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 157 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 runs 63.8% on time across 2,699 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 2,695 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.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.56% 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. 2,567 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FWA to ORD questions
How often is FWA to ORD delayed?
About one flight in three arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 33.8% of the 2,695 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is FWA to ORD compared with the rest of the country?
66.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 11 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on FWA to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 80.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 48.4%, 33 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 FWA to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 50.8% on time, compared with 75.8% in June. Across the year that is 25 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 FWA — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on-time record76.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record65.6%
- PSA Airlines on-time record46.6%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. FWA to ORD and ORD to FWA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.