Route reliability record
LNK→ORD
Lincoln to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,553
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 466 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 1,553 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 Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 79.2%, against 75.5% 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
75.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,500 completed flights
Avg delay
101 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.96%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
75.5% on time across 1,553 flights
These figures cover 1,553 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.6% 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 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 | 1,553 | 75.5% | 101 min | 2.96% | B |
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.
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 | 79.2% | 80.4% | 1.47% | 11am–2pm, Sun | — |
| 2. OMA → ORDOmaha to Chicago | United Airlines | 73.3% | 74.6% | 1.71% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 739 15:17 |
| 3. LNK → ORDLincoln to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 73.3% | 75.5% | 2.96% | 5am–8am, Tue | OO 5910 07:30 |
| 4. OMA → ORDOmaha to Chicago | Envoy Air | 73.0% | 75.6% | 3.39% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 5. OMA → ORDOmaha to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 68.7% | 71.5% | 3.91% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
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 half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am640 flights85.8%
- 8am–11am103 flights83.8%
- 11am–2pm396 flights70.2%
- 2pm–5pm353 flights61.7%
- 5pm–8pm61 flights65.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 85.8% of the time, against 61.7% for the afternoon window. That is 24 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 640 flights scheduled in it.
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. May was the busiest month here, with 151 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.2%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 37,000 reported delay minutes.
- 31%Carrier
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%National Airspace System
- 19%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 19% 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 36,880 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 2.96%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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 62.9% on time across 1,555 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 1,553 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 2.96% 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. 1,500 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 24.5% of the 1,553 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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?
75.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 2 points against it. That is worth a B 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 85.8% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 61.7%, 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 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 route79.5%
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- BOS to ORD, a related route72.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record75.5%
- 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.
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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.