Route reliability record
MLI→ORD
Moline to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,191
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 139 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.9% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% 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 2,191 flights, of which Envoy Air flew 624 at 74.5% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 61 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,082 completed flights
Avg delay
102 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.88%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
74.5% on time across 624 flights
These figures cover 2,191 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.7% 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 MLI to ORD
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 624 | 74.5% | 66 min | 3.21% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,557 | 70.4% | 114 min | 5.59% | C− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 10 | 60.0% | 179 min | 0.00% | D+ |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.6% 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.
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 23 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am566 flights82.3%
- 8am–11am397 flights72.3%
- 11am–2pm433 flights76.5%
- 2pm–5pm268 flights60.5%
- 5pm–8pm513 flights59.8%
- 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: 59.8% on time, against 82.3% 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 566 flights scheduled in it.
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 79.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 65.6%. 14 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 60,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 60,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 60,473 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 82.3% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.88%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.7% 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 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 68.5% on time across 2,191 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,191 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.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.88% 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. 2,082 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 arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 28.5% of the 2,191 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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 74.5% on time across 624 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 70.4%, a gap of 4 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 82.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 59.8%, 23 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-time record74.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record70.4%
- Republic Airways on-time record60.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.