Route reliability record
ORD→LIT
Chicago to Little Rock
- Flights
- 1,432
- Period
- September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,432 ORD to LIT flights, of which Envoy Air flew 993 at 75.1% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to LIT: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 80.1% of the time and Thursday flights 79.1%, against 74.0% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
74.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,388 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.93%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
75.1% on time across 993 flights
These figures cover 1,432 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.2% 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 LIT
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 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 | 993 | 75.1% | 65 min | 1.81% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 421 | 71.4% | 78 min | 5.46% | C− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 15 | 64.3% | 128 min | 6.67% | D− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.5% 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.
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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 | 73.7% | 75.1% | 1.81% | 11am–2pm, Tue | MQ 3561 19:59 |
| 2. ORD → LITChicago to Little Rock | SkyWest Airlines | 67.5% | 71.4% | 5.46% | 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 14 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am11 flights—
- 8am–11am426 flights77.3%
- 11am–2pm221 flights80.1%
- 2pm–5pm252 flights72.8%
- 5pm–8pm357 flights70.3%
- 8pm–5am165 flights66.0%
Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 80.1% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 66.0%. 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 426 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to LIT 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 LIT, the best departure window is 11am–2pm at 80.1% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 66.0%, a wide gap of 14.1 points. All US flights leaving 11am–2pm ran 78.3%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am77.3%
- 11am–2pm80.1%
- 2–5pm72.8%
- 5–8pm70.3%
- 8pm–5am66.0%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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. July was the busiest month here, with 186 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 79.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.4%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 25,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%National Airspace System
- 16%Carrier
- 15%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 25,199 reported delay minutes.
45% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations run at 2.93%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly 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
10.2% 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.
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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 69.6% on time across 1,430 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,432 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 delay figures matter less here than the 2.93% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 1,388 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 26.0% of the 1,432 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to LIT?
Envoy Air leads at 75.1% on time across 993 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 71.4%, a gap of 4 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 80.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 66.0%, 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 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 LIT75.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to LIT71.4%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- DFW to LIT, a related route78.2%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- United Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record75.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record71.4%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.