Route reliability record
ORD→LIT
Chicago to Little Rock
- Flights
- 1,406
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 552 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,406 ORD to LIT flights, of which Envoy Air flew 953 at 75.4% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to LIT: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.1% of the time and Thursday flights 80.5%, against 74.8% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
74.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,367 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.56%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
75.4% on time across 953 flights
These figures cover 1,406 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% 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 LIT
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 3 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Envoy Air | 953 | 75.4% | 59 min | 1.57% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 435 | 73.7% | 79 min | 4.60% | C− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 15 | 64.3% | 128 min | 6.67% | D− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 4.6% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
Flights on ORD to LIT
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Chicago to Little Rock
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ORD → LITChicago to Little Rock | Envoy Air | 74.2% | 75.4% | 1.57% | 11am–2pm, Tue | MQ 3561 18:44 |
| 2. ORD → LITChicago to Little Rock | SkyWest Airlines | 70.3% | 73.7% | 4.60% | 2pm–5pm, Thu | — |
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 17 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am6 flights—
- 8am–11am479 flights78.8%
- 11am–2pm177 flights83.1%
- 2pm–5pm262 flights73.9%
- 5pm–8pm368 flights68.8%
- 8pm–5am114 flights66.1%
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 83.1% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 66.1%. 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 479 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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 58.6% on time, against 82.4% 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. June was the busiest month here, with 157 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 80.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 67.5%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 23,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%National Airspace System
- 20%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 22,912 reported delay minutes.
44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit.
Cancellations run at 2.56%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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. 9.5% 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.
The 552 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 67.8% on time across 1,404 flights, 7 points below 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,406 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 LIT after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 82.4% on time and December 58.6%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,367 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to LIT questions
How often is ORD to LIT delayed?
About 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 25.2% of the 1,406 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to LIT?
Envoy Air leads at 75.4% on time across 953 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 73.7%, a gap of 2 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ORD to LIT?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 83.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 66.1%, 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 LIT?
December is the weakest month at 58.6% on time, compared with 82.4% in September. Across the year that is 24 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
- LIT to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ORD to LIT75.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to LIT73.7%
- ORD to LGA, a related route67.3%
- DFW to LIT, a related route75.8%
- ORD to BOS, a related route67.6%
- United Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record75.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record73.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ORD to LIT and LIT 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.