Route reliability record
SBN→ORD
South Bend to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,790
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 84 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.9% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% 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 2,790 SBN to ORD flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
Best time to fly SBN to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 73.5% of the time and Wednesday flights 70.9%, against 65.5% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 118 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,679 completed flights
Avg delay
99 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.87%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
65.7% on time across 2,777 flights
These figures cover 2,790 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.7% 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 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 | 2,777 | 65.7% | 100 min | 3.85% | C− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 2 | 50.0% | 29 min | 0.00% | F+ |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 11 | 40.0% | 37 min | 9.09% | F− |
Flight by flight
Flights on SBN 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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly South Bend 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 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. AZO → ORDKalamazoo to Chicago | Envoy Air | 75.9% | 79.3% | 4.32% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 2. SBN → ORDSouth Bend to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 63.2% | 65.7% | 3.85% | 5am–8am, Wed (route) | OO 5723 06:05 |
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 22 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am726 flights73.5%
- 8am–11am365 flights70.6%
- 11am–2pm624 flights66.0%
- 2pm–5pm624 flights60.4%
- 5pm–8pm342 flights51.9%
- 8pm–5am109 flights63.2%
Scale runs 45% to 80%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.9% on time, against 73.5% 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.
Explore
Filter SBN 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 SBN to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 73.5% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 51.9%, a wide gap of 21.6 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am73.5%
- 8–11am70.6%
- 11am–2pm66.0%
- 2–5pm60.4%
- 5–8pm51.9%
- 8pm–5am63.2%
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%.
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 70.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.3%, a spread of 12 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 91,000 reported delay minutes.
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 25%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
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 73.5% on time here. The split is drawn from 91,409 reported delay minutes.
No single cause dominates. late-arriving aircraft at 33%, carrier at 31% and national airspace system at 25% split the 91,000 reported delay minutes between them. An even spread like this usually means the operation is running close to its designed capacity with no one obvious weak point, and it is the hardest pattern for a traveller to route around.
Cancellations run at 3.87%, against 1.89% 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
14.7% 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 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 63.1% on time across 2,789 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 2,790 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 3.87% 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. 2,679 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 arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 34.5% of the 2,790 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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?
65.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 12 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 73.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 51.9%, 22 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
- SBN to ATL, a related route76.5%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- SBN to CLT, a related route78.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record65.7%
- Republic Airways on-time record50.0%
- United Airlines on-time record40.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.
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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.