Route reliability record
LGA→ORD
New York to Chicago
- Flights
- 11,630
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 733 mi
- Carriers
- 6
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% 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 11,630 LGA to ORD flights, of which American Airlines flew 2,989 at 69.2% on time.
Best time to fly LGA to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.6% of the time and Saturday flights 71.7%, against 66.7% for the route overall.
American Airlines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 69.2% on time across 2,989 flights.
Key figures
On time
66.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 10,952 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.45%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
69.2% on time across 2,989 flights
These figures cover 12,000 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.0% 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 LGA to ORD
The four carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 2,989 | 69.2% | 89 min | 4.78% | C− |
| Republic Airways | 1,285 | 68.3% | 62 min | 9.42% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines | 2,309 | 65.8% | 97 min | 5.89% | C− |
| United Airlines | 4,671 | 65.4% | 90 min | 4.24% | C− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 284 | 64.0% | 88 min | 7.04% | D− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 92 | 61.8% | 90 min | 17.39% | D− |
Republic Airways cancels 9.4% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
Flights on LGA 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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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly New York 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. 5 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. HPN → ORDWhite Plains to Chicago | Envoy Air | 74.9% | 78.1% | 4.10% | 5am–8am, Sat | MQ 3496 07:10 |
| 2. EWR → ORDNewark to Chicago | American Airlines | 73.1% | 76.8% | 4.76% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. JFK → ORDNew York to Chicago | Republic Airways | 71.9% | 76.3% | 5.78% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 4. JFK → ORDNew York to Chicago | American Airlines | 69.3% | 73.1% | 5.17% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 5. EWR → ORDNewark to Chicago | United Airlines | 68.3% | 70.3% | 2.83% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 1875 11:25 |
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 36 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am2,041 flights84.6%
- 8am–11am2,080 flights78.0%
- 11am–2pm1,437 flights69.0%
- 2pm–5pm2,451 flights61.0%
- 5pm–8pm2,367 flights48.7%
- 8pm–5am1,254 flights60.3%
Scale runs 40% to 90%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 48.7% on time, against 84.6% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 2,451 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LGA 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 LGA to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 84.6% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 48.7%, a wide gap of 35.9 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am84.6%
- 8–11am78.0%
- 11am–2pm69.0%
- 2–5pm61.0%
- 5–8pm48.7%
- 8pm–5am60.3%
best all US flightsScale 40% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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.
Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 55.8%. February is the strongest month at 79.7%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 24 points. October was the busiest month here, with 1,025 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 71.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 57.8%, a spread of 14 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 322,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%National Airspace System
- 19%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 322,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 322,267 reported delay minutes.
37% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 120,000 minutes out of 322,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 5.45%, 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
15.0% 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.
The 733 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The return leg runs 66.6% on time across 11,630 flights, within half a point 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 11,630 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 5.45% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 10,952 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LGA to ORD questions
How often is LGA 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 33.3% of the 11,630 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LGA to ORD?
American Airlines leads at 69.2% on time across 2,989 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 65.4%, a gap of 4 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LGA to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 84.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 48.7%, 36 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 October delays on LGA to ORD?
October is the weakest month at 55.8% on time, compared with 79.7% in February. Across the year that is 24 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 LGA — the return legseparate record
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- American Airlines on LGA to ORD69.2%
- Republic Airways on LGA to ORD68.3%
- Delta Air Lines on LGA to ORD65.8%
- United Airlines on LGA to ORD65.4%
- Spirit Airlines on LGA to ORD64.0%
- LGA to ATL, a related route75.5%
- BOS to ORD, a related route71.9%
- LGA to BOS, a related route73.1%
- American Airlines on-time record69.2%
- Republic Airways on-time record68.3%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record65.8%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. LGA to ORD and ORD to LGA 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.