Route reliability record
LEX→ORD
Lexington to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,703
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 323 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 1,703 LEX to ORD flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly LEX to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 74.9%, against 73.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 40 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,649 completed flights
Avg delay
105 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.05%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
72.4% on time across 1,384 flights
These figures cover 1,703 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.5% 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 LEX 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 23 | 82.6% | 82 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 296 | 76.7% | 89 min | 1.35% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,384 | 72.4% | 109 min | 3.47% | C− |
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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 24 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am519 flights84.8%
- 8am–11am193 flights80.9%
- 11am–2pm296 flights72.0%
- 2pm–5pm203 flights68.2%
- 5pm–8pm473 flights60.5%
- 8pm–5am19 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 60.5% on time, against 84.8% 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 519 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LEX 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 LEX to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 84.8% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 60.5%, a wide gap of 24.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am84.8%
- 8–11am80.9%
- 11am–2pm72.0%
- 2–5pm68.2%
- 5–8pm60.5%
- 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 31 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 50.0% on time, against 81.4% in May. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 229 flights.
The day of the week is close to irrelevant here: 4 points separates the best day from the worst. Weekly demand peaks are not what drives the delays on this operation.
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 46,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Carrier
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%National Airspace System
- 13%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 13% 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 2.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 46,335 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 18,000 of the 46,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.05%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 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
13.5% 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 323 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 69.3% on time across 1,702 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 1,703 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 3.05% 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. 1,649 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LEX to ORD questions
How often is LEX to ORD delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 26.7% of the 1,703 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is LEX to ORD compared with the rest of the country?
73.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 4 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LEX to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 84.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 60.5%, 24 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 LEX to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 50.0% on time, compared with 81.4% in May. Across the year that is 31 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 LEX — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on LEX to ORD76.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on LEX to ORD72.4%
- LEX to ATL, a related route87.0%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- LEX to CLT, a related route82.9%
- PSA Airlines on-time record82.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record76.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record72.4%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. LEX to ORD and ORD to LEX 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.