Route reliability record
ORD→DLH
Chicago to Duluth
- Flights
- 1,238
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 397 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three 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 1,238 ORD to DLH flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
Best time to fly ORD to DLH: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 71.8% of the time and Saturday flights 73.2%, against 65.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 120 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,175 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.52%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
64.0% on time across 1,114 flights
These figures cover 1,238 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.7% 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 DLH
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 124 | 76.7% | 88 min | 4.84% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,114 | 64.0% | 79 min | 4.49% | D− |
Flight by flight
Flights on ORD to DLH
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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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 13 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am293 flights71.8%
- 11am–2pm365 flights67.5%
- 2pm–5pm194 flights62.6%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am386 flights59.3%
Scale runs 50% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 59.3% on time, against 71.8% for the 8am–11am 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 386 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to DLH 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 DLH, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 71.8% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 59.3%, a wide gap of 12.5 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am71.8%
- 11am–2pm67.5%
- 2–5pm62.6%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am59.3%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 32 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 41.4% on time, against 73.7% 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. April was the busiest month here, with 137 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 73.2% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 59.3%, a spread of 14 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 33,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 13,000 of the 33,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 32,611 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 71.8% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.52%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly 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
13.7% 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 397 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 69.0% on time across 1,239 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,238 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 DLH after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.52% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,175 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to DLH questions
How often is ORD to DLH delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 34.7% of the 1,238 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 DLH compared with the rest of the country?
65.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 12 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ORD to DLH?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 71.8% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 59.3%, 13 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 DLH?
December is the weakest month at 41.4% on time, compared with 73.7% in October. Across the year that is 32 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
- DLH to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on ORD to DLH76.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to DLH64.0%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- MSP to DLH, a related route80.0%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- Republic Airways on-time record76.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record64.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ORD to DLH and DLH to ORD are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed ORD to DLH’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.