Route reliability record
ORD→PBI
Chicago to West Palm Beach
- Flights
- 1,298
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,144 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,298 ORD to PBI flights, of which United Airlines flew 502 at 73.5% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to PBI: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 75.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 80.5%, against 68.9% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 87 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,272 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.69%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
73.5% on time across 502 flights
These figures cover 1,298 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.9% 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 PBI
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 73.5% of the time; American Airlines manages 66.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 796 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 502 | 73.5% | 67 min | 0.40% | C+ |
| American Airlines | 796 | 66.0% | 85 min | 2.51% | C |
United leads American by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Chicago to West Palm Beach
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. 3 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ORD → FLLChicago to Fort Lauderdale | United Airlines | 77.9% | 78.5% | 0.81% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 1421 07:00 |
| 2. ORD → PBIChicago to West Palm Beach | United Airlines | 73.2% | 73.5% | 0.40% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. MDW → FLLChicago to Fort Lauderdale | Southwest Airlines | 72.9% | 74.0% | 1.51% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 4. ORD → FLLChicago to Fort Lauderdale | American Airlines | 70.6% | 71.7% | 1.54% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 5. ORD → PBIChicago to West Palm Beach | American Airlines | 64.3% | 66.0% | 2.51% | 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 11 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am109 flights75.9%
- 8am–11am292 flights71.5%
- 11am–2pm589 flights67.9%
- 2pm–5pm179 flights67.2%
- 5pm–8pm128 flights64.5%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.5% on time, against 75.9% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 589 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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.
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 60.8%. June is the strongest month at 80.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 19 points. March was the busiest month here, with 163 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.0%. 18 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 50% of the 31,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
50% 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 31,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 25 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 31,198 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 75.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.69% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.31%.
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. 13.9% 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.
The 1,144 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 67.0% on time across 1,297 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,298 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 PBI 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. June runs 80.0% on time and March 60.8%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,272 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to PBI questions
How often is ORD to PBI 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 31.1% of the 1,298 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to PBI?
United Airlines leads at 73.5% on time across 502 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 66.0%, a gap of 8 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 PBI?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 75.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 64.5%, 11 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 March delays on ORD to PBI?
March is the weakest month at 60.8% on time, compared with 80.0% in June. Across the year that is 19 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
- PBI to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- United Airlines on ORD to PBI73.5%
- American Airlines on ORD to PBI66.0%
- ORD to LGA, a related route67.3%
- ATL to PBI, a related route75.7%
- ORD to BOS, a related route67.6%
- United Airlines on-time record73.5%
- American Airlines on-time record66.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. ORD to PBI and PBI 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.