Route reliability record
ORD→BMI
Chicago to Bloomington
- Flights
- 879
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 116 mi
- Carriers
- 1
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, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 879 ORD to BMI flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly ORD to BMI: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.9% of the time and Saturday flights 80.0%, against 77.1% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 842 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.87%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
77.1% on time across 879 flights
These figures cover 879 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.6% 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 ORD to BMI
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 879 | 77.1% | 69 min | 3.87% | B− |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Chicago to Bloomington
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. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ORD → BMIChicago to Bloomington | Envoy Air | 74.1% | 77.1% | 3.87% | 11am–2pm, Sat | — |
| 2. ORD → PIAChicago to Peoria | Envoy Air | 70.2% | 73.7% | 4.70% | 11am–2pm, Tue | — |
| 3. ORD → CMIChicago to Champaign | Envoy Air | 69.4% | 72.1% | 3.81% | 11am–2pm, Tue | MQ 3694 20:27 |
| 4. ORD → PIAChicago to Peoria | SkyWest Airlines | 64.3% | 67.2% | 4.37% | 8am–11am, Tue | OO 5874 15:35 |
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 15 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am174 flights78.6%
- 11am–2pm191 flights85.9%
- 2pm–5pm118 flights79.8%
- 5pm–8pm102 flights72.4%
- 8pm–5am294 flights70.8%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 85.9% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 70.8%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 294 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to BMI 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 ORD to BMI, the best departure window is 11am–2pm at 85.9% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 70.8%, a wide gap of 15.1 points. All US flights leaving 11am–2pm ran 78.3%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am78.6%
- 11am–2pm85.9%
- 2–5pm79.8%
- 5–8pm72.4%
- 8pm–5am70.8%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 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 57.9% on time, against 86.9% in October. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 70.5%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 13,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%National Airspace System
- 16%Carrier
- 13%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 13% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 13,378 reported delay minutes.
52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one.
Cancellations run at 3.87%, 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
10.6% 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 116 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.6% on time across 879 flights, 5 points above 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 879 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in BMI after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.87% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 842 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to BMI questions
How often is ORD to BMI 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 22.9% of the 879 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is ORD to BMI compared with the rest of the country?
77.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of half a point against it. That is worth a B− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ORD to BMI?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 85.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 70.8%, 15 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 ORD to BMI?
December is the weakest month at 57.9% on time, compared with 86.9% in October. Across the year that is 29 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
- BMI to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- DFW to BMI, a related route83.5%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record77.1%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ORD to BMI and BMI to ORD are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed ORD to BMI’s on-time badge on your site
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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.