Route reliability record
ORD→LEX
Chicago to Lexington
- Flights
- 1,702
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 323 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 1,702 ORD to LEX flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
Best time to fly ORD to LEX: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 78.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 75.4%, against 69.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 80 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,646 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.11%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
68.5% on time across 1,384 flights
These figures cover 1,702 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.2% 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 LEX
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 | 295 | 72.9% | 77 min | 1.36% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 23 | 69.6% | 62 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,384 | 68.5% | 89 min | 3.54% | C− |
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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 14 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am55 flights74.5%
- 8am–11am340 flights74.6%
- 11am–2pm193 flights78.7%
- 2pm–5pm445 flights66.6%
- 5pm–8pm213 flights65.4%
- 8pm–5am456 flights64.9%
Scale runs 55% to 85%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 64.9% on time, against 78.7% for the 11am–2pm 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 456 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to LEX 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 LEX, the best departure window is 11am–2pm at 78.7% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 64.9%, a wide gap of 13.8 points. All US flights leaving 11am–2pm ran 78.3%.
- 5–8am74.5%
- 8–11am74.6%
- 11am–2pm78.7%
- 2–5pm66.6%
- 5–8pm65.4%
- 8pm–5am64.9%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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 56.8% on time, against 82.9% 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. October was the busiest month here, with 228 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 75.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 65.1%, 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 44,000 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Carrier
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%National Airspace System
- 17%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 17% 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 2.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 43,692 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 15,000 of the 44,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.11%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
13.2% 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 323 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 73.3% on time across 1,703 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 1,702 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 LEX after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.11% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 1,646 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to LEX questions
How often is ORD to LEX 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 30.7% of the 1,702 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is ORD to LEX compared with the rest of the country?
69.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 8 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 LEX?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 78.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 64.9%, 14 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 LEX?
December is the weakest month at 56.8% on time, compared with 82.9% in September. Across the year that is 26 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
- LEX to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ORD to LEX72.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to LEX68.5%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- ATL to LEX, a related route84.0%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record72.9%
- PSA Airlines on-time record69.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record68.5%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. ORD to LEX and LEX 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.