Route reliability record
LIT→ORD
Little Rock to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,430
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 552 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,430 LIT to ORD flights, of which Envoy Air flew 992 at 72.2% on time.
Best time to fly LIT to ORD: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 74.9%, against 69.6% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 77 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,377 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.15%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
72.2% on time across 992 flights
These figures cover 1,430 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.4% 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 LIT to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 72.2% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 64.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 423 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 992 | 72.2% | 73 min | 1.92% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 423 | 64.1% | 93 min | 5.44% | D− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 15 | 50.0% | 86 min | 20.00% | F− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.4% 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 LIT 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 Little Rock to Chicago
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. LIT → ORDLittle Rock to Chicago | Envoy Air | 70.8% | 72.2% | 1.92% | 8am–11am, Tue | MQ 3656 06:31 |
| 2. LIT → ORDLittle Rock to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 60.6% | 64.1% | 5.44% | 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 24 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am403 flights78.9%
- 8am–11am70 flights83.8%
- 11am–2pm371 flights66.4%
- 2pm–5pm212 flights68.9%
- 5pm–8pm370 flights60.1%
- 8pm–5am4 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: 60.1% on time, against 83.8% for the 8am–11am 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 403 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LIT 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 LIT to ORD, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 83.8% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 60.1%, a wide gap of 23.7 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am78.9%
- 8–11am83.8%
- 11am–2pm66.4%
- 2–5pm68.9%
- 5–8pm60.1%
- 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 26 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 53.6% on time, against 79.2% in September. 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 186 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.2%, a spread of 13 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 33,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 33,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one. The split is drawn from 33,369 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 83.8% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.15%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
12.4% 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 552 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.0% on time across 1,432 flights, 4 points above 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 1,430 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 3.15% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,377 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LIT to ORD questions
How often is LIT to ORD delayed?
Roughly 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 30.4% of the 1,430 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LIT to ORD?
Envoy Air leads at 72.2% on time across 992 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 64.1%, a gap of 8 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 LIT to ORD?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 83.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 60.1%, 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 LIT to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 53.6% on time, compared with 79.2% in September. Across the year that is 26 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 LIT — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on LIT to ORD72.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on LIT to ORD64.1%
- LIT to DFW, a related route76.4%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- LIT to ATL, a related route88.5%
- Envoy Air on-time record72.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record64.1%
- Republic Airways on-time record50.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. LIT to ORD and ORD to LIT 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.