Route reliability record
ORD→SGF
Chicago to Springfield
- Flights
- 1,434
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 438 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,434 ORD to SGF flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly ORD to SGF: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 81.0%, against 75.0% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,392 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.44%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
77.2% on time across 1,088 flights
These figures cover 1,434 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.3% 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 SGF
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,088 | 77.2% | 64 min | 2.11% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 346 | 68.1% | 75 min | 3.47% | C− |
Flight by flight
Flights on ORD to SGF
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.
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 10 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–8am2 flights—
- 8am–11am453 flights81.0%
- 11am–2pm224 flights73.4%
- 2pm–5pm313 flights70.9%
- 5pm–8pm314 flights71.2%
- 8pm–5am128 flights75.6%
Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 81.0% of the time, against 70.9% for the afternoon window. That is 10 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 453 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.
December is the weak month at 57.3% on time, against 85.6% in May. 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. September was the busiest month here, with 161 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.3%. 10 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 43% of the 23,000 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 14%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 23,467 reported delay minutes.
43% 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 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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.
Cancellations sit at 2.44% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.49%.
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. 10.3% 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 438 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 70.8% on time across 1,437 flights, 4 points below 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,434 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 SGF 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. May runs 85.6% on time and December 57.3%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,392 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to SGF questions
How often is ORD to SGF delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 25.0% of the 1,434 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is ORD to SGF compared with the rest of the country?
75.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 points against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ORD to SGF?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 81.0% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 70.9%, 10 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 SGF?
December is the weakest month at 57.3% on time, compared with 85.6% in May. 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
- SGF to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ORD to SGF77.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to SGF68.1%
- ORD to LGA, a related route67.3%
- DFW to SGF, a related route81.1%
- ORD to BOS, a related route67.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record77.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record68.1%
- 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 SGF and SGF 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.