Route reliability record
ORD→DLH
Chicago to Duluth
- Flights
- 1,216
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 397 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.9% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,216 ORD to DLH flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
Best time to fly ORD to DLH: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 70.9% of the time and Saturday flights 71.6%, against 64.6% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 130 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,164 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.87%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
63.7% on time across 1,133 flights
These figures cover 1,216 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.2% 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 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 | 83 | 77.6% | 95 min | 7.23% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,133 | 63.7% | 79 min | 3.62% | 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.
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 12 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am293 flights70.9%
- 11am–2pm365 flights67.7%
- 2pm–5pm173 flights58.9%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am385 flights59.2%
Scale runs 50% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 70.9% of the time, against 58.9% for the afternoon window. That is 12 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 385 flights scheduled in it.
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 71.6% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 56.0%. 16 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 33,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 12,000 of the 33,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 32,919 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 70.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.87%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.2% 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 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 68.5% on time across 1,216 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 1,216 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 3.87% 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. 1,164 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 35.4% of the 1,216 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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?
64.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 13 points against it. That is worth a D− 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 70.9% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 58.9%, 12 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
- ORD to LGA, a related route67.3%
- MSP to DLH, a related route81.3%
- ORD to BOS, a related route67.6%
- Republic Airways on-time record77.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record63.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.