Route reliability record
OMA→ORD
Omaha to Chicago
- Flights
- 3,108
- Period
- September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 3,108 OMA to ORD flights, of which Envoy Air flew 825 at 75.6% on time.
Best time to fly OMA to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 78.9%, against 74.2% for the route overall.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 75.6% on time across 825 flights.
Key figures
On time
74.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,005 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.02%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
75.6% on time across 825 flights
These figures cover 3,108 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.9% 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 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 | 243 | 80.3% | 82 min | 1.65% | B |
| Envoy Air | 825 | 75.6% | 75 min | 3.88% | B− |
| United Airlines | 1,381 | 73.6% | 95 min | 2.17% | C |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 199 | 71.9% | 84 min | 3.52% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 8 | 71.4% | 55 min | 12.50% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 452 | 71.2% | 93 min | 4.42% | C− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 4.4% 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 OMA 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 Omaha to Chicago
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 2 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. OMA → MDWOmaha to Chicago | Southwest Airlines | 80.1% | 81.1% | 1.29% | 11am–2pm, Sun | — |
| 2. OMA → ORDOmaha to Chicago | Envoy Air | 72.7% | 75.6% | 3.88% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. OMA → ORDOmaha to Chicago | United Airlines | 72.0% | 73.6% | 2.17% | 8am–11am, Sat | UA 739 15:17 |
| 4. LNK → ORDLincoln to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 71.9% | 74.3% | 3.28% | 5am–8am, Fri | OO 5910 07:30 |
| 5. OMA → ORDOmaha to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 68.1% | 71.2% | 4.42% | 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 20 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am543 flights84.8%
- 8am–11am447 flights82.5%
- 11am–2pm767 flights75.3%
- 2pm–5pm618 flights68.8%
- 5pm–8pm728 flights64.5%
- 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: 64.5% on time, against 84.8% 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 767 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter OMA 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 OMA to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 84.8% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 64.5%, a wide gap of 20.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am84.8%
- 8–11am82.5%
- 11am–2pm75.3%
- 2–5pm68.8%
- 5–8pm64.5%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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.
August is the worst month at 63.8% on time, 21 points below February, the best at 84.6%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 305 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.4%, a spread of 10 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 68,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%National Airspace System
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 68,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 68,055 reported delay minutes.
39% 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 27,000 minutes out of 68,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.02%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 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
10.9% 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 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 3,105 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 3,108 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 3.02% 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. 3,005 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 arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 25.8% of the 3,108 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 OMA to ORD?
Envoy Air leads at 75.6% on time across 825 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 71.2%, 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 84.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 64.5%, 20 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 August delays on OMA to ORD?
August is the weakest month at 63.8% 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
- Eppley Airfield (OMA) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- American Airlines on OMA to ORD80.3%
- Envoy Air on OMA to ORD75.6%
- United Airlines on OMA to ORD73.6%
- Republic Airways on OMA to ORD71.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on OMA to ORD71.2%
- OMA to DEN, a related route75.8%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- OMA to PHX, a related route82.1%
- American Airlines on-time record80.3%
- Envoy Air on-time record75.6%
- United Airlines on-time record73.6%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.
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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.