Route reliability record
ORD→SGF
Chicago to Springfield
- Flights
- 1,450
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 438 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,450 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 82.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 80.9%, against 74.5% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
74.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,398 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.10%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
77.7% on time across 1,116 flights
These figures cover 1,450 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.3% 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 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 | 1,116 | 77.7% | 65 min | 2.60% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 334 | 63.3% | 76 min | 4.79% | D− |
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.
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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 14 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am2 flights—
- 8am–11am440 flights82.1%
- 11am–2pm196 flights76.2%
- 2pm–5pm307 flights69.4%
- 5pm–8pm321 flights68.0%
- 8pm–5am184 flights74.0%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 82.1% of the time, against 68.0% for the evening window. That is 14 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 440 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to SGF 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 SGF, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 82.1% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 68.0%, a wide gap of 14.1 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am82.1%
- 11am–2pm76.2%
- 2–5pm69.4%
- 5–8pm68.0%
- 8pm–5am74.0%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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 80.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.2%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 25,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 13%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 13% 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 24,559 reported delay minutes.
44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one.
Cancellations run at 3.10%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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
10.3% 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 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 71.2% on time across 1,453 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,450 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 delay figures matter less here than the 3.10% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over 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. 1,398 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 25.5% of the 1,450 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is ORD to SGF compared with the rest of the country?
74.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 3 points against it. That is worth a C− 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 82.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 68.0%, 14 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 SGF77.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to SGF63.3%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- DFW to SGF, a related route82.3%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record77.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record63.3%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.