Route reliability record
MKE→ORD
Milwaukee to Chicago
- Flights
- 5,344
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 67 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.4% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten 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 5,344 MKE to ORD flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
Best time to fly MKE to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 78.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 72.1%, against 68.4% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 89 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 5,108 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.38%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
68.3% on time across 5,046 flights
These figures cover 5,344 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.4% 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 MKE 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 116 | 75.9% | 82 min | 6.90% | B− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 156 | 70.1% | 74 min | 5.77% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 5,046 | 68.3% | 94 min | 4.22% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 26 | 54.5% | 176 min | 15.38% | F− |
Flight by flight
Flights on MKE 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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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 27 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am1,657 flights78.0%
- 8am–11am1,293 flights70.4%
- 11am–2pm861 flights65.8%
- 2pm–5pm781 flights63.3%
- 5pm–8pm705 flights50.7%
- 8pm–5am47 flights56.5%
Scale runs 40% to 85%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 50.7% on time, against 78.0% 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 1,657 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MKE 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 MKE to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 78.0% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 50.7%, a wide gap of 27.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am78.0%
- 8–11am70.4%
- 11am–2pm65.8%
- 2–5pm63.3%
- 5–8pm50.7%
- 8pm–5am56.5%
best all US flightsScale 40% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 14 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 60.8% on time, against 75.1% in February. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 517 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 72.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.9%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 44% of the 150,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%Carrier
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 66,000 of the 150,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 150,467 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.38%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 25 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
14.4% 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.
At 67 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 64.3% on time across 5,344 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 5,344 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 4.38% 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. 5,108 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MKE to ORD questions
How often is MKE 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 31.6% of the 5,344 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is MKE to ORD compared with the rest of the country?
68.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 9 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MKE to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 78.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 50.7%, 27 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 MKE to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 60.8% on time, compared with 75.1% in February. Across the year that is 14 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 MKE — the return legseparate record
- Milwaukee Mitchell International (MKE) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on MKE to ORD75.9%
- Envoy Air on MKE to ORD70.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on MKE to ORD68.3%
- MKE to DEN, a related route78.8%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- MKE to ATL, a related route88.5%
- Republic Airways on-time record75.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record70.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record68.3%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. MKE to ORD and ORD to MKE 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.