Route reliability record
PIA→ORD
Peoria to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,214
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 130 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.7% 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 2,214 PIA to ORD flights, of which Envoy Air flew 1,001 at 77.2% on time.
Best time to fly PIA to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.8% of the time and Saturday flights 77.7%, against 70.5% 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 68 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,108 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.65%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
77.2% on time across 1,001 flights
These figures cover 2,214 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.7% 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 PIA to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 77.2% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 65.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,213 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,001 | 77.2% | 82 min | 4.60% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,213 | 65.0% | 98 min | 4.70% | C− |
SkyWest Airlines 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 PIA to ORD
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 Peoria 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. 1 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BMI → ORDBloomington to Chicago | Envoy Air | 78.7% | 81.6% | 3.53% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. PIA → ORDPeoria to Chicago | Envoy Air | 73.6% | 77.2% | 4.60% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 3. PIA → ORDPeoria to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 61.9% | 65.0% | 4.70% | 5am–8am, Sat | OO 4808 17:19 |
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 35 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am464 flights85.8%
- 8am–11am625 flights77.7%
- 11am–2pm363 flights71.2%
- 2pm–5pm83 flights72.5%
- 5pm–8pm629 flights50.8%
- 8pm–5am50 flights68.2%
Scale runs 40% to 90%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 50.8% on time, against 85.8% for the 5am–8am 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 629 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter PIA to ORD 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 PIA to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 85.8% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 50.8%, a wide gap of 35.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am85.8%
- 8–11am77.7%
- 11am–2pm71.2%
- 2–5pm72.5%
- 5–8pm50.8%
- 8pm–5am68.2%
best all US flightsScale 40% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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 58.2% on time, against 80.3% 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, Saturday is the strongest day at 77.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.3%, a spread of 14 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 58,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%National Airspace System
- 27%Carrier
- 11%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 58,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one. The split is drawn from 57,575 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 85.8% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.65%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
12.7% 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 70.1% on time across 2,213 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 2,214 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 delay figures matter less here than the 4.65% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 2,108 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PIA to ORD questions
How often is PIA to ORD 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 29.5% of the 2,214 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on PIA to ORD?
Envoy Air leads at 77.2% on time across 1,001 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 65.0%, a gap of 12 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 PIA to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 50.8%, 35 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 PIA to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 58.2% on time, compared with 80.3% in September. Across the year that is 22 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 PIA — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on PIA to ORD77.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on PIA to ORD65.0%
- PIA to DFW, a related route79.1%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- PIA to CLT, a related route78.8%
- Envoy Air on-time record77.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record65.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. PIA to ORD and ORD to PIA 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.