Route reliability record
ORD→MLI
Chicago to Moline
- Flights
- 2,299
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 139 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.1% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 2,299 ORD to MLI flights, of which Envoy Air flew 602 at 74.3% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to MLI: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 75.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 76.3%, against 68.0% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 93 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,175 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.09%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
74.3% on time across 602 flights
These figures cover 2,299 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.1% 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 MLI
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 74.3% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 65.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,687 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 602 | 74.3% | 62 min | 2.99% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,687 | 65.8% | 86 min | 5.81% | C− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 10 | 44.4% | 54 min | 10.00% | F− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.8% 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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Chicago to Moline
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 → MLIChicago to Moline | Envoy Air | 72.1% | 74.3% | 2.99% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. ORD → MLIChicago to Moline | SkyWest Airlines | 62.0% | 65.8% | 5.81% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
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 12 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am6 flights—
- 8am–11am614 flights75.7%
- 11am–2pm244 flights66.2%
- 2pm–5pm405 flights64.6%
- 5pm–8pm506 flights63.9%
- 8pm–5am524 flights66.6%
Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.9% on time, against 75.7% for the 8am–11am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 614 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to MLI 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 MLI, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 75.7% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 63.9%, a wide gap of 11.8 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am75.7%
- 11am–2pm66.2%
- 2–5pm64.6%
- 5–8pm63.9%
- 8pm–5am66.6%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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 55.6% on time, against 84.0% 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. April was the busiest month here, with 247 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 76.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 61.6%, a spread of 15 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 56,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Carrier
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%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 55,867 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 20,000 of the 56,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 5.09%, 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
14.1% 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 139 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 72.1% on time across 2,302 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 2,299 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 MLI after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.09% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over 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. 2,175 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to MLI questions
How often is ORD to MLI delayed?
About 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 32.0% of the 2,299 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 MLI?
Envoy Air leads at 74.3% on time across 602 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 65.8%, a gap of 9 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 MLI?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 75.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 63.9%, 12 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 MLI?
December is the weakest month at 55.6% on time, compared with 84.0% in September. Across the year that is 28 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
- MLI to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ORD to MLI74.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to MLI65.8%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- DFW to MLI, a related route84.7%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record74.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record65.8%
- Republic Airways on-time record44.4%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ORD to MLI and MLI to ORD are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed ORD to MLI’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.