Route reliability record
SBN→ORD
South Bend to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,705
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 84 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three 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 2,705 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 126 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,600 completed flights
Avg delay
95 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.81%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
65.1% on time across 2,692 flights
These figures cover 2,705 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.7% 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 SBN to ORD
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 2,692 | 65.1% | 95 min | 3.79% | C− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 2 | 50.0% | 29 min | 0.00% | F+ |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 11 | 40.0% | 37 min | 9.09% | F− |
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 28 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–8am726 flights73.3%
- 8am–11am365 flights72.5%
- 11am–2pm603 flights65.5%
- 2pm–5pm500 flights62.2%
- 5pm–8pm408 flights45.3%
- 8pm–5am103 flights64.0%
Scale runs 35% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 45.3% on time, against 73.3% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 726 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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 51.9% on time, against 77.9% in June. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 253 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 70.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 58.3%. 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 86,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
36% 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 86,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 86,325 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 73.3% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.81%, 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. 14.7% 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 62.7% on time across 2,704 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 2,705 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 3.81% 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. 2,600 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SBN to ORD questions
How often is SBN to ORD delayed?
About 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 35.0% of the 2,705 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is SBN to ORD compared with the rest of the country?
65.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 13 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SBN to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 73.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 45.3%, 28 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 SBN to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 51.9% on time, compared with 77.9% in June. Across the year that is 26 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 SBN — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record65.1%
- Republic Airways on-time record50.0%
- United Airlines on-time record40.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. SBN to ORD and ORD to SBN 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.