Route reliability record
FWA→ORD
Fort Wayne to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,812
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 157 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.5% 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 2,812 FWA to ORD flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
Best time to fly FWA to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 71.9%, against 68.1% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 92 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,683 completed flights
Avg delay
104 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.45%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
67.6% on time across 2,584 flights
These figures cover 2,812 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.6% 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 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 | 199 | 75.1% | 70 min | 5.03% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 2,584 | 67.6% | 106 min | 4.45% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 29 | 62.1% | 96 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on FWA 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 34 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am799 flights81.9%
- 8am–11am260 flights77.3%
- 11am–2pm617 flights70.6%
- 2pm–5pm473 flights55.3%
- 5pm–8pm626 flights53.9%
- 8pm–5am37 flights48.4%
Scale runs 40% to 85%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 48.4% on time, against 81.9% 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 799 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter FWA 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 FWA to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 81.9% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 48.4%, a wide gap of 33.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am81.9%
- 8–11am77.3%
- 11am–2pm70.6%
- 2–5pm55.3%
- 5–8pm53.9%
- 8pm–5am48.4%
best all US flightsScale 40% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 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 77.9% in July. 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 71.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.9%, a spread of 11 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 89,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Carrier
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 37,000 of the 89,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 88,581 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.45%, against 1.89% 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
15.6% 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 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 63.2% on time across 2,815 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,812 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 4.45% 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. 2,683 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 arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 31.9% of the 2,812 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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?
68.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, 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 FWA to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 81.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 48.4%, 34 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 77.9% in July. Across the year that is 27 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 FWA to ORD75.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on FWA to ORD67.6%
- FWA to DFW, a related route80.1%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- BOS to ORD, a related route71.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record75.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record67.6%
- PSA Airlines on-time record62.1%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.
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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.