Route reliability record
ORD→PIA
Chicago to Peoria
- Flights
- 2,213
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 130 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.5% 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 2,213 ORD to PIA flights, of which Envoy Air flew 1,001 at 73.7% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to PIA: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 76.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 75.1%, against 70.1% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 72 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,110 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.52%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
73.7% on time across 1,001 flights
These figures cover 2,213 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.0% 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 PIA
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 73.7% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 67.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,212 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,001 | 73.7% | 57 min | 4.70% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,212 | 67.2% | 74 min | 4.37% | C− |
Envoy Air cancels 4.7% 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 PIA
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 Peoria
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. 1 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ORD → BMIChicago to Bloomington | Envoy Air | 74.1% | 77.1% | 3.87% | 11am–2pm, Sat | — |
| 2. ORD → PIAChicago to Peoria | Envoy Air | 70.2% | 73.7% | 4.70% | 11am–2pm, Tue | — |
| 3. ORD → PIAChicago to Peoria | SkyWest Airlines | 64.3% | 67.2% | 4.37% | 8am–11am, Tue | OO 5874 15:35 |
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 13 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am16 flights—
- 8am–11am502 flights76.8%
- 11am–2pm394 flights72.8%
- 2pm–5pm399 flights63.6%
- 5pm–8pm361 flights66.2%
- 8pm–5am541 flights69.2%
Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 76.8% of the time, against 63.6% for the afternoon window. That is 13 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 541 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to PIA 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 PIA, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 76.8% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 63.6%, a wide gap of 13.2 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am76.8%
- 11am–2pm72.8%
- 2–5pm63.6%
- 5–8pm66.2%
- 8pm–5am69.2%
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 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 57.6% on time, against 78.8% 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 295 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 75.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.4%, a spread of 12 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 43,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 16%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 2.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 42,575 reported delay minutes.
37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 43,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 to one.
Cancellations run at 4.52%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly 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
11.0% 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 130 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 runs 70.5% on time across 2,214 flights, within half a point 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 2,213 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 PIA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.52% 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. 2,110 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to PIA questions
How often is ORD to PIA 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 29.9% of the 2,213 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 PIA?
Envoy Air leads at 73.7% on time across 1,001 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 67.2%, a gap of 7 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 PIA?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 76.8% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 63.6%, 13 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 PIA?
December is the weakest month at 57.6% on time, compared with 78.8% in September. 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
- PIA to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ORD to PIA73.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to PIA67.2%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- DFW to PIA, a related route77.8%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record73.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record67.2%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ORD to PIA and PIA to ORD are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed ORD to PIA’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.