Route reliability record
ORD→LSE
Chicago to La Crosse
- Flights
- 1,061
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 215 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.7% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,061 ORD to LSE flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly ORD to LSE: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 80.7%, against 75.1% 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
75.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,008 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.71%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
75.1% on time across 1,061 flights
These figures cover 1,061 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% 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 LSE
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 Air | 1,061 | 75.1% | 60 min | 4.71% | B− |
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Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 1,061 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am347 flights81.7%
- 11am–2pm9 flights—
- 2pm–5pm334 flights72.1%
- 5pm–8pm18 flights—
- 8pm–5am353 flights72.1%
Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 81.7% of the time, against 72.1% for the overnight window. That is 10 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 353 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to LSE 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 LSE, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 81.7% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 72.1%, a real gap of 9.6 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am81.7%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm72.1%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am72.1%
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 33 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 54.2% on time, against 87.0% in November. 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 93 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 70.5%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
51% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 15,108 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 81.7% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.71%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
8.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 215 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 81.2% on time across 1,061 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,061 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in LSE after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.71% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 1,008 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to LSE questions
How often is ORD to LSE 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 24.9% of the 1,061 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is ORD to LSE compared with the rest of the country?
75.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 2 points against it. That is worth a B− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ORD to LSE?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 81.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 72.1%, 10 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 LSE?
December is the weakest month at 54.2% on time, compared with 87.0% in November. Across the year that is 33 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
- LSE to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- ORD to LAX, a related route72.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record75.1%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ORD to LSE and LSE to ORD are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed ORD to LSE’s on-time badge on your site
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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.