Route reliability record
PBI→ORD
West Palm Beach to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,297
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,144 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,297 PBI to ORD flights, of which American Airlines flew 796 at 67.3% on time.
Best time to fly PBI to ORD: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 76.1%, against 67.0% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 106 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,260 completed flights
Avg delay
100 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.93%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
67.3% on time across 796 flights
These figures cover 1,297 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.2% 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 PBI to ORD
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 796 | 67.3% | 106 min | 2.64% | C |
| United Airlines | 501 | 66.5% | 90 min | 0.80% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 67.3%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly West Palm Beach to Chicago
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. FLL → ORDFort Lauderdale to Chicago | United Airlines | 74.1% | 74.7% | 0.74% | 5am–8am, Thu | UA 1755 12:26 |
| 2. FLL → MDWFort Lauderdale to Chicago | Southwest Airlines | 70.0% | 70.9% | 1.24% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 3. FLL → ORDFort Lauderdale to Chicago | American Airlines | 68.9% | 70.0% | 1.54% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 4. PBI → ORDWest Palm Beach to Chicago | United Airlines | 66.0% | 66.5% | 0.80% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 5. PBI → ORDWest Palm Beach to Chicago | American Airlines | 65.5% | 67.3% | 2.64% | 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 34 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am88 flights83.9%
- 8am–11am228 flights88.1%
- 11am–2pm301 flights72.0%
- 2pm–5pm333 flights56.5%
- 5pm–8pm346 flights54.0%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 54.0% on time, against 88.1% for the 8am–11am 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 346 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 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.
August is the worst month at 47.1% on time, 29 points below December, the best at 75.8%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 164 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 76.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 59.8%. 16 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 42% of the 41,000 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.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 25%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
42% 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 41,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 41,466 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 88.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.93% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.93%.
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. 15.2% 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 68.9% on time across 1,298 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 1,297 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 ORD 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. December runs 75.8% on time and August 47.1%, a swing of 29 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,260 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PBI to ORD questions
How often is PBI to ORD 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 33.0% of the 1,297 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on PBI to ORD?
American Airlines leads at 67.3% on time across 796 flights. United Airlines is at the other end on 66.5%, a gap of about a point. 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 PBI to ORD?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 88.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 54.0%, 34 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 August delays on PBI to ORD?
August is the weakest month at 47.1% on time, compared with 75.8% in December. Across the year that is 29 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
- ORD to PBI — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- American Airlines on PBI to ORD67.3%
- United Airlines on PBI to ORD66.5%
- PBI to ATL, a related route82.9%
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- PBI to EWR, a related route74.5%
- American Airlines on-time record67.3%
- United Airlines on-time record66.5%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. PBI to ORD and ORD to PBI 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.