Route reliability record
LNK→ORD
Lincoln to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,618
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 466 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four 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 1,618 LNK to ORD flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly LNK to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.1% of the time and Friday flights 78.0%, against 74.3% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
74.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,558 completed flights
Avg delay
107 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.28%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
74.3% on time across 1,618 flights
These figures cover 1,618 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on LNK 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,618 | 74.3% | 107 min | 3.28% | C− |
Flight by flight
Flights on LNK 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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Lincoln 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. OMA → MDWOmaha to Chicago | Southwest Airlines | 80.1% | 81.1% | 1.29% | 11am–2pm, Sun | — |
| 2. OMA → ORDOmaha to Chicago | Envoy Air | 72.7% | 75.6% | 3.88% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. OMA → ORDOmaha to Chicago | United Airlines | 72.0% | 73.6% | 2.17% | 8am–11am, Sat | UA 739 15:17 |
| 4. LNK → ORDLincoln to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 71.9% | 74.3% | 3.28% | 5am–8am, Fri | OO 5910 07:30 |
| 5. OMA → ORDOmaha to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 68.1% | 71.2% | 4.42% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
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 25 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am755 flights84.1%
- 8am–11am73 flights75.7%
- 11am–2pm375 flights69.9%
- 2pm–5pm354 flights58.6%
- 5pm–8pm61 flights65.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 84.1% of the time, against 58.6% for the afternoon window. That is 25 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 755 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LNK 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 LNK to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 84.1% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 58.6%, a wide gap of 25.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am84.1%
- 8–11am75.7%
- 11am–2pm69.9%
- 2–5pm58.6%
- 5–8pm65.5%
- 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 25 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 58.1% on time, against 83.5% 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 155 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 78.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.7%, a spread of 8 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 43,000 reported delay minutes.
- 31%Carrier
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%National Airspace System
- 18%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 18% 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 3.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 42,824 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.28%, 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
12.6% 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 466 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 61.3% on time across 1,622 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,618 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 3.28% 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. 1,558 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LNK to ORD questions
How often is LNK 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 25.7% of the 1,618 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is LNK to ORD compared with the rest of the country?
74.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 3 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LNK to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 84.1% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 58.6%, 25 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 LNK to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 58.1% on time, compared with 83.5% in September. Across the year that is 25 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 LNK — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- LNK to DEN, a related route80.1%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- BOS to ORD, a related route71.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record74.3%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. LNK to ORD and ORD to LNK are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed LNK to ORD’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.