Route reliability record
MLI→ORD
Moline to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,302
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 139 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.1% 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 2,302 MLI to ORD flights, of which Envoy Air flew 605 at 76.9% on time.
Best time to fly MLI to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 82.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 79.7%, against 72.1% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 52 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,182 completed flights
Avg delay
106 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.08%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
76.9% on time across 605 flights
These figures cover 2,302 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.1% 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 MLI to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 76.9% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 70.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,687 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 605 | 76.9% | 72 min | 3.31% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,687 | 70.4% | 115 min | 5.75% | C− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 10 | 60.0% | 179 min | 0.00% | D+ |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.8% 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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Moline 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. MLI → ORDMoline to Chicago | Envoy Air | 74.4% | 76.9% | 3.31% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. MLI → ORDMoline to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 66.4% | 70.4% | 5.75% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 22 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am596 flights82.9%
- 8am–11am509 flights71.8%
- 11am–2pm416 flights76.8%
- 2pm–5pm256 flights61.4%
- 5pm–8pm511 flights60.8%
- 8pm–5am14 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: 60.8% on time, against 82.9% 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 596 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MLI 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 MLI to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 82.9% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 60.8%, a wide gap of 22.1 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am82.9%
- 8–11am71.8%
- 11am–2pm76.8%
- 2–5pm61.4%
- 5–8pm60.8%
- 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 22 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.
February is the weak month at 61.9% on time, against 84.1% 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 248 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 67.8%, a spread of 12 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 64,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 64,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. The split is drawn from 64,306 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 82.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.08%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
14.1% 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 139 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 68.0% on time across 2,299 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 2,302 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 5.08% 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. 2,182 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MLI to ORD questions
How often is MLI to ORD delayed?
Roughly 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 27.9% of the 2,302 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MLI to ORD?
Envoy Air leads at 76.9% on time across 605 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 70.4%, a gap of 7 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 MLI to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 82.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 60.8%, 22 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 February delays on MLI to ORD?
February is the weakest month at 61.9% on time, compared with 84.1% in September. Across the year that is 22 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 MLI — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on MLI to ORD76.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on MLI to ORD70.4%
- MLI to DFW, a related route84.5%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- BOS to ORD, a related route71.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record76.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record70.4%
- Republic Airways on-time record60.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. MLI to ORD and ORD to MLI 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.