Route reliability record
OMA→ORD
Omaha to Chicago
- Flights
- 3,025
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 416 mi
- Carriers
- 6
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 3,025 flights, of which Envoy Air flew 855 at 75.6% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 75.6% on time across 855 flights.
Key figures
On time
74.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,937 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.61%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
75.6% on time across 855 flights
These figures cover 3,025 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.2% 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 OMA to ORD
The three 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 261 | 76.0% | 126 min | 2.30% | B |
| Envoy Air | 855 | 75.6% | 69 min | 3.39% | B− |
| United Airlines | 1,347 | 74.6% | 92 min | 1.71% | C |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 170 | 72.7% | 73 min | 2.94% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 384 | 71.5% | 80 min | 3.91% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 8 | 71.4% | 55 min | 12.50% | C− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 3.9% 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 22 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am502 flights85.1%
- 8am–11am489 flights83.5%
- 11am–2pm720 flights75.8%
- 2pm–5pm621 flights70.1%
- 5pm–8pm688 flights63.0%
- 8pm–5am5 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.0% on time, against 85.1% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 720 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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 64.0% on time, against 84.6% 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 300 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.3%. 11 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 64,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%National Airspace System
- 18%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
40% 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 64,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 64,226 reported delay minutes.
37% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 24,000 minutes out of 64,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 2.61%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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. 10.2% 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 416 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 69.3% on time across 3,022 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,025 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 calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 84.6% on time and December 64.0%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,937 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
OMA to ORD questions
How often is OMA to ORD delayed?
About 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 25.5% of the 3,025 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on OMA to ORD?
Envoy Air leads at 75.6% on time across 855 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 71.5%, 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 OMA to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 63.0%, 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 December delays on OMA to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 64.0% on time, compared with 84.6% in February. Across the year that is 21 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 OMA — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- American Airlines on-time record76.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record75.6%
- United Airlines on-time record74.6%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. OMA to ORD and ORD to OMA 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.