Route reliability record
ORD→OMA
Chicago to Omaha
- Flights
- 3,022
- Period
- July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 3,022 flights, of which Envoy Air flew 855 at 75.8% on time.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 75.8% on time across 855 flights.
Key figures
On time
69.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,950 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.22%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
75.8% on time across 855 flights
These figures cover 3,022 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% 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 OMA
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 75.8% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 63.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 381 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 855 | 75.8% | 55 min | 3.27% | B− |
| United Airlines | 1,348 | 70.6% | 65 min | 1.19% | C |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 170 | 70.1% | 66 min | 3.53% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 381 | 63.2% | 83 min | 2.89% | D |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 8 | 57.1% | 60 min | 12.50% | D− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 260 | 50.0% | 63 min | 1.92% | F |
Envoy Air cancels 3.3% 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.
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 23 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am117 flights78.4%
- 8am–11am687 flights78.6%
- 11am–2pm656 flights77.7%
- 2pm–5pm501 flights69.1%
- 5pm–8pm277 flights61.4%
- 8pm–5am784 flights55.4%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 55.4% on time, against 78.6% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 784 flights scheduled in it.
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. April was the busiest month here, with 300 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.7%. 16 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 45% of the 59,000 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.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
45% 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 59,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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. The split is drawn from 58,896 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 78.6% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.22% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.17%.
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. 10.5% 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.
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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.5% on time across 3,025 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 3,022 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.
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. 2,950 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 arrive 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 3,022 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 OMA?
Envoy Air leads at 75.8% on time across 855 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 63.2%, a gap of 13 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 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 78.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 55.4%, 23 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
- Envoy Air on-time record75.8%
- United Airlines on-time record70.6%
- Republic Airways on-time record70.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.