Route reliability record
ORD→OMA
Chicago to Omaha
- Flights
- 3,105
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 416 mi
- Carriers
- 6
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 about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 3,105 ORD to OMA flights, of which Envoy Air flew 825 at 75.7% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to OMA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 78.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 77.1%, against 69.3% for the route overall.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 75.7% on time across 825 flights.
Key figures
On time
69.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,028 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.45%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
75.7% on time across 825 flights
These figures cover 3,105 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.1% 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 OMA
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 75.7% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 63.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 452 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 825 | 75.7% | 56 min | 3.52% | B− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 199 | 72.9% | 63 min | 3.52% | C− |
| United Airlines | 1,379 | 69.6% | 66 min | 1.52% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 452 | 63.7% | 75 min | 3.10% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 8 | 57.1% | 60 min | 12.50% | D− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 242 | 53.4% | 76 min | 1.65% | F |
Envoy Air cancels 3.5% 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 OMA
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 Omaha
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 2 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MDW → OMAChicago to Omaha | Southwest Airlines | 73.6% | 74.4% | 1.06% | 11am–2pm, Wed | — |
| 2. ORD → OMAChicago to Omaha | Envoy Air | 73.0% | 75.7% | 3.52% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. ORD → OMAChicago to Omaha | United Airlines | 68.5% | 69.6% | 1.52% | 8am–11am, Tue | UA 1778 08:40 |
| 4. ORD → OMAChicago to Omaha | SkyWest Airlines | 61.7% | 63.7% | 3.10% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 5. ORD → LNKChicago to Lincoln | SkyWest Airlines | 59.2% | 61.3% | 3.45% | 8am–11am, Tue | OO 5215 08:45 |
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 22 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am71 flights78.8%
- 8am–11am791 flights78.1%
- 11am–2pm621 flights74.7%
- 2pm–5pm527 flights68.1%
- 5pm–8pm338 flights64.6%
- 8pm–5am757 flights57.2%
Scale runs 50% to 85%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.2% on time, against 78.8% for the 5am–8am 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 791 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to OMA 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 OMA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 78.8% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 57.2%, a wide gap of 21.6 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am78.8%
- 8–11am78.1%
- 11am–2pm74.7%
- 2–5pm68.1%
- 5–8pm64.6%
- 8pm–5am57.2%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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 56.7% on time, against 77.6% in February. 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 305 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.7%, a spread of 15 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 62,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 62,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 61,686 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 78.8% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.45% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.03%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
11.1% 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 416 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.2% on time across 3,108 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,105 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 OMA 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. February runs 77.6% on time and December 56.7%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 3,028 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to OMA questions
How often is ORD to OMA 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 3,105 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to OMA?
Envoy Air leads at 75.7% on time across 825 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 63.7%, a gap of 12 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 OMA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 78.8% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 57.2%, 22 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 OMA?
December is the weakest month at 56.7% on time, compared with 77.6% in February. Across the year that is 21 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
- OMA to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Eppley Airfield (OMA) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ORD to OMA75.7%
- Republic Airways on ORD to OMA72.9%
- United Airlines on ORD to OMA69.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to OMA63.7%
- American Airlines on ORD to OMA53.4%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- DEN to OMA, a related route76.9%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record75.7%
- Republic Airways on-time record72.9%
- United Airlines on-time record69.6%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ORD to OMA and OMA 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.