Route reliability record
MSN→ORD
Madison to Chicago
- Flights
- 4,070
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 108 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.9% 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 4,070 MSN to ORD flights, of which Envoy Air flew 1,111 at 81.5% on time.
Best time to fly MSN to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 82.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 74.7%, against 72.8% for the route overall.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 81.5% on time across 1,111 flights.
Key figures
On time
72.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,910 completed flights
Avg delay
96 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.88%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
81.5% on time across 1,111 flights
These figures cover 4,070 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.4% 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 MSN to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 81.5% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 67.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,289 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,111 | 81.5% | 86 min | 3.33% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 566 | 75.0% | 85 min | 3.18% | B− |
| United Airlines | 996 | 72.8% | 71 min | 2.31% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,289 | 67.3% | 110 min | 5.20% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 108 | 33.7% | 165 min | 12.04% | F− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.2% 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.
Flight by flight
Flights on MSN 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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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Madison 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. MSN → ORDMadison to Chicago | Envoy Air | 78.8% | 81.5% | 3.33% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 2. MSN → ORDMadison to Chicago | Republic Airways | 72.6% | 75.0% | 3.18% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. MSN → ORDMadison to Chicago | United Airlines | 71.1% | 72.8% | 2.31% | 11am–2pm, Thu | UA 2137 06:30 |
| 4. MSN → ORDMadison to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 63.8% | 67.3% | 5.20% | 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 28 points, against 14 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am1,046 flights82.6%
- 8am–11am912 flights80.3%
- 11am–2pm538 flights71.4%
- 2pm–5pm933 flights64.5%
- 5pm–8pm439 flights55.0%
- 8pm–5am202 flights65.9%
Scale runs 45% to 90%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 55.0% on time, against 82.6% 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 1,046 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MSN 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 MSN to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 82.6% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 55.0%, a wide gap of 27.6 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am82.6%
- 8–11am80.3%
- 11am–2pm71.4%
- 2–5pm64.5%
- 5–8pm55.0%
- 8pm–5am65.9%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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.
January is the weak month at 62.4% on time, against 82.2% in July. 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 427 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.0%, a spread of 5 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 102,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 27%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 102,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. The split is drawn from 101,939 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 82.6% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.88%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
11.4% 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 108 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 runs 71.0% on time across 4,073 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 4,070 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 3.88% 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. 3,910 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MSN to ORD questions
How often is MSN 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 27.2% of the 4,070 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on MSN to ORD?
Envoy Air leads at 81.5% on time across 1,111 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 67.3%, a gap of 14 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 MSN to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 82.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 55.0%, 28 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 January delays on MSN to ORD?
January is the weakest month at 62.4% on time, compared with 82.2% in July. Across the year that is 20 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 MSN — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on MSN to ORD81.5%
- Republic Airways on MSN to ORD75.0%
- United Airlines on MSN to ORD72.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on MSN to ORD67.3%
- PSA Airlines on MSN to ORD33.7%
- MSN to DCA, a related route72.9%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- MSN to MSP, a related route84.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record81.5%
- Republic Airways on-time record75.0%
- United Airlines on-time record72.8%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. MSN to ORD and ORD to MSN 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.