Route reliability record
ORD→SBN
Chicago to South Bend
- Flights
- 2,704
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 84 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, a little over half of flights arrive on time, worth a D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 2,704 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 15 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 149 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,585 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.25%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
62.5% on time across 2,692 flights
These figures cover 2,704 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.3% 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 SBN
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 2 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 10 | 90.0% | 81 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 2,692 | 62.5% | 87 min | 4.27% | D− |
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 15 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am12 flights—
- 8am–11am627 flights67.4%
- 11am–2pm268 flights69.4%
- 2pm–5pm719 flights61.5%
- 5pm–8pm717 flights54.5%
- 8pm–5am361 flights67.0%
Scale runs 45% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 54.5% on time, against 69.4% for the 11am–2pm 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 719 flights scheduled in it.
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.
July is the worst month at 50.0% on time, 28 points below September, the best at 78.4%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. May was the busiest month here, with 253 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 67.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 55.9%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 84,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
38% 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 84,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 83,853 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 30,000 of the 84,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 4.25%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 16.3% 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 84 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 65.0% on time across 2,705 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 2,704 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 delay figures matter less here than the 4.25% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 2,585 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to SBN questions
How often is ORD to SBN 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 37.3% of the 2,704 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is ORD to SBN compared with the rest of the country?
62.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 15 points against it. That is worth a D− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ORD to SBN?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 69.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 54.5%, 15 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 July delays on ORD to SBN?
July is the weakest month at 50.0% on time, compared with 78.4% 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
- SBN to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on-time record100.0%
- United Airlines on-time record90.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record62.5%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. ORD to SBN and SBN 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.