Route reliability record
LAN→ORD
Lansing to Chicago
- Flights
- 777
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 179 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 777 LAN to ORD flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Best time to fly LAN to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 88.3%, against 80.7% 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
80.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 755 completed flights
Avg delay
107 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.70%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
80.7% on time across 777 flights
These figures cover 777 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.9% 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 LAN 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 | 777 | 80.7% | 107 min | 2.70% | B |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Lansing 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. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. LAN → ORDLansing to Chicago | Envoy Air | 78.5% | 80.7% | 2.70% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. GRR → MDWGrand Rapids to Chicago | Southwest Airlines | 76.9% | 77.2% | 0.43% | 11am–2pm, Thu | — |
| 3. GRR → ORDGrand Rapids to Chicago | American Airlines | 73.0% | 75.6% | 3.38% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 4. GRR → ORDGrand Rapids to Chicago | Republic Airways | 68.9% | 70.9% | 2.87% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
| 5. GRR → ORDGrand Rapids to Chicago | Envoy Air | 67.0% | 69.5% | 3.65% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
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 20 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–8am356 flights91.3%
- 8am–11am8 flights—
- 11am–2pm202 flights72.0%
- 2pm–5pm135 flights71.3%
- 5pm–8pm76 flights71.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.3% of the time, against 71.2% for the evening window. That is 20 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 356 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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 68.3% on time, against 88.7% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 91 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 78.3%. 10 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 43% of the 16,000 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
43% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 15,574 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, 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 5,301 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.70%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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
8.9% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 179 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 73.9% on time across 777 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 777 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: treat all of this as provisional. 777 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 80.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 755 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LAN to ORD questions
How often is LAN to ORD delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.3% of the 777 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is LAN to ORD compared with the rest of the country?
80.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LAN to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 71.2%, 20 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 LAN to ORD?
January is the weakest month at 68.3% on time, compared with 88.7% in October. Across the year that is 20 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 LAN — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- LAN to DTW, a related route76.1%
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- BOS to ORD, a related route72.7%
- Envoy Air on-time record80.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. LAN to ORD and ORD to LAN 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.