Route reliability record
ORD→FWA
Chicago to Fort Wayne
- Flights
- 2,815
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 157 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.6% 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 D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 2,815 ORD to FWA flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
Best time to fly ORD to FWA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 73.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 68.8%, against 63.2% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 141 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,679 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.58%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
62.4% on time across 2,587 flights
These figures cover 2,815 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.9% 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 ORD to FWA
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 Airthin sample | 199 | 73.9% | 59 min | 5.53% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 2,587 | 62.4% | 80 min | 4.56% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 29 | 62.1% | 71 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on ORD to FWA
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 17 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am59 flights73.2%
- 8am–11am596 flights72.6%
- 11am–2pm108 flights59.4%
- 2pm–5pm944 flights60.7%
- 5pm–8pm347 flights56.5%
- 8pm–5am761 flights61.5%
Scale runs 50% to 80%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.5% on time, against 73.2% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 944 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to FWA 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 FWA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 73.2% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 56.5%, a wide gap of 16.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am73.2%
- 8–11am72.6%
- 11am–2pm59.4%
- 2–5pm60.7%
- 5–8pm56.5%
- 8pm–5am61.5%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
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 42.4% on time, against 71.4% in September. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 279 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 68.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 57.7%, a spread of 11 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 78,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Carrier
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%National Airspace System
- 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 78,017 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 28,000 of the 78,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 4.58%, 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
15.9% 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 157 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 68.1% on time across 2,812 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.
The sample behind these figures is 2,815 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 FWA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.58% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 2,679 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to FWA questions
How often is ORD to FWA delayed?
Roughly 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 36.8% of the 2,815 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 FWA compared with the rest of the country?
63.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 14 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 FWA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 73.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 56.5%, 17 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 FWA?
December is the weakest month at 42.4% on time, compared with 71.4% in September. 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
- FWA to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ORD to FWA73.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to FWA62.4%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- DFW to FWA, a related route80.5%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record73.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record62.4%
- PSA Airlines on-time record62.1%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. ORD to FWA and FWA 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.