Chicago · IL

ORD — O'Hare International Airport

Three connected terminals, one that isn't, and a train that runs all night

O'Hare is one of the world's great connecting airports, and for domestic transfers it is genuinely easy: three of its terminals are joined behind security, so most connections are a walk rather than an expedition. The exception is the international terminal, which is separate in a way that catches people out.

It also has something few large American airports offer — a rapid transit line running twenty-four hours a day directly from the airport into the city centre. On a snowy weekday afternoon that train is not just cheaper than a taxi, it is faster.

Terminals and how they connect

Terminals 1, 2 and 3

Domestic operations, all connected to each other behind security by walkways and underground tunnels. A connection among these three needs no re-screening and is usually a ten to twenty minute walk.

Terminal 5

The international terminal, physically separate from the others and reached by the Airport Transit System. It now handles some domestic flights too, which makes checking your terminal more important than it used to be. There is no airside link to Terminals 1 to 3.

The Airport Transit System

An automated people mover connecting all terminals with the remote parking and rental car centre, running frequently and free of charge. It is landside, so using it between Terminal 5 and the others means clearing security again.

Getting into Chicago

Times below are realistic ranges rather than best cases. Rail journeys keep to a timetable; road journeys do not, and treating the two the same is how people miss flights.

CTA Blue Line

45 minutes to the Loop

The station sits beneath Terminal 2 and trains run twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, straight into downtown Chicago. Cheap, immune to traffic and weather, and the reason many locals never drive to O'Hare.

Metra North Central Service

40 minutes to Union Station

A commuter rail option from a station reached by shuttle. Fewer trains, weekdays only, and useful mainly if Union Station is where you are actually headed.

Taxi or ride-hailing

30 minutes to well over an hour

Around eighteen miles to the Loop on the Kennedy Expressway, which is heavily congested in both peaks. Ride-hailing pickups are from designated areas at each terminal and the parking garage.

Airport shuttle coaches

45 to 90 minutes

Shared vans and scheduled coaches serve downtown hotels and the suburbs. Sensible with a lot of luggage; slower than the train once multiple stops are counted.

Connecting through ORD

Among Terminals 1, 2 and 3 this is one of the more pleasant large-airport connections in the United States, and an hour is often genuinely enough. Terminal 5 changes the calculation completely: you exit, ride the Airport Transit System and clear security from scratch, so allow at least two hours, and more if you are arriving internationally and need immigration and customs first. The other factor here is weather — O'Hare's winter and its summer thunderstorms both produce delay cascades, so a tight last connection of the day carries real risk.

Worth knowing before you fly

The Blue Line is often the fastest option, not just the cheapest

In snow or at rush hour, a train on its own right of way beats the Kennedy Expressway comfortably. The one drawback is the walk and escalators from the platform up into Terminal 2, which is tedious with large cases.

Check whether your flight is in Terminal 5

It used to be a safe assumption that Terminal 5 meant international. It no longer is, and turning up at Terminal 3 for a Terminal 5 flight costs you a good half hour.

Winter here is a scheduling risk, not an inconvenience

De-icing queues and ground stops at O'Hare ripple through the whole US network. On a January itinerary, avoiding the last flight of the day and leaving a wider connection buffer is worth more than any other precaution.

Terminal assignments, transit timetables and fares all change. Confirm the details that matter to your trip with the airport or transport operator before you travel.

Will you make your connection at ORD?

Most of what a tight connection costs was never about ORD. Border formalities, a bag that is not through-checked and a door that closes before departure are the same at every airport, and they are usually what strands people — so the sum below is real arithmetic even though we hold no transfer times for ORD.

Connection typeNo border formality either side.Scheduled layover (minutes)Inbound flight running late (minutes)Terminal change at ORD (minutes) — your figureWe do not publish a terminal-transfer time for ORD. We have not sourced one from the airport and we will not estimate it, because a made-up number here is exactly what makes somebody miss a flight. Take it from O'Hare International's own site and everything else in the sum below is statutory, structural or your own itinerary.

Both flights use the same terminalTwo separate tickets, not one booking

45 minutes to spare

You have 60 minutes after the delay. This connection needs about 15. Enough room for a gate change.

This is the floor, before you walk anywhere. Every minute below holds at any airport, because none of it is a property of ORD — it is border formalities, baggage and a closing gate. Add your terminal change above to finish the sum.

How the required time is made up
15m	Gate closes before departure	typical published gate cutoff
15m	needed in total

Arithmetic, not a prediction — we hold no data that would let us put a probability on your flight, so we do not pretend to. The gate cutoff is a typical published figure; confirm your airline's. Your airline's app knows your actual gates, which we do not.

For four hubs we have read the operator's own transfer figures and datestamped them, which lets the arithmetic run without asking you anything: DFW, IAH, MIA and LAX.

If your flight through ORD is cancelled or badly delayed

ORD in the DOT's own numbers

Departures from Chicago as the carriers filed them with the US Department of Transportation for May 2026. This is the figure that decides whether a delay here is anybody's fault but the weather's.

ORD is the 4th-busiest airport we cover, its 25.6% late rate is 3.2 points worse than the 22.4% median, the 11th-worst here, and 74.1% of the filed delay minutes were coded as carrier delay or late-arriving aircraft rather than extreme weather or air traffic control, below the 74.6% median here.

Departures filed: 17,615
Over 15 min late: 25.6%
Cancelled: 0.6%
Carrier delay + late-arriving aircraft: 74.1%

The last figure is the share of filed delay minutes coded as carrier delay or late-arriving aircraft rather than extreme weather or air traffic control. It sums two BTS fields and is not a BTS field itself, and it establishes no fault: the late-arriving code records that the inbound aircraft was late, not what delayed it. The reasoning, and the objection to it, are set out in the airline accountability index. Summed across reporting carriers only, so a hub carrying a lot of non-reporting regional traffic reads better here than a traveller experiences it.

These are monthly aggregate filing codes. They cannot establish what caused your individual flight, whether it was within the carrier's control, or whether compensation is owed.

The departures from ORD most likely to run late

Every carrier and destination out of Chicago with enough filed departures to measure, worst first. A route missing from this list flies too thinly for a percentage to mean anything, which is a reason to withhold it rather than to soften it.

Route	Airline	Flights	Late
ORD → SFO	United Airlines	370	37.3%
ORD → DFW	American Airlines	375	32.5%
ORD → DCA	United Airlines	331	29%
ORD → LGA	United Airlines	438	28.1%
ORD → LGA	American Airlines	306	26.1%
ORD → IAH	United Airlines	352	20.7%

What the airlines flying here have committed to in writing

Under 14 CFR § 253.4 a carrier's Conditions of Carriage are incorporated into your ticket, which makes them enforceable terms rather than a customer-service policy. Below is what each carrier with filed departures from ORD commits to when the disruption is theirs. These 4 have contract text we have read ourselves.

American Airlines

Ask for the seat

American Airlines' contract commits to their own next available flight and says nothing about who sold the ticket.

Rebooking your delayed / canceled flight. Read from the contract on 2026-07-29. Source

Delta Air Lines

Ask for the seat

Delta Air Lines' contract commits to their own next available flight and says nothing about who sold the ticket.

Rule 19.A, Delta's Liability in the Event of Schedule Changes, Delays and Flight Cancellations. Read from the contract on 2026-07-29. Source

United Airlines

We hold no text

United Airlines' contract page refuses automated requests, so we cannot verify what it currently says and will not paraphrase it.

Not yet transcribed. Source

Southwest Airlines

Ask for the refund

Southwest Airlines' contract only says it may rebook you, so there is no seat to demand — but it names a refund as your remedy.

Section 9.b(1)(i). Read from the contract on 2026-07-29. Source

AS, F9 also file departures from ORD. We have not transcribed their Conditions of Carriage, so this page says nothing about what they promise rather than guessing.

Get the exact clause and a script to read them

The federal floor, underneath any contract

Statutory minimums, so no airline's contract and no agency's terms can go below them. They follow your itinerary rather than ORD, so each one is set out in full on its own tool:

How ORD compares with airports of its size

A late-departure rate means little on its own, so these are the airports sitting immediately either side of ORD on the same table. Each figure is the share of departures leaving more than fifteen minutes behind schedule, from the same Department of Transportation filing.

Which airlines run late out of ORD

Departures from ORD as filed with the US Department of Transportation, worst first. Only carriers with at least 300 departures in the month appear, so a carrier missing from this table flies here too thinly to measure fairly rather than perfectly.

Airline	Departures	Over 15 min late	Carrier delay + late-arriving aircraft
Southwest Airlines	403	39%	85.3%
American Airlines	6,084	29.4%	79.9%
Frontier Airlines	318	28.6%	73.3%
United Airlines	9,414	23.3%	68.2%
Delta Air Lines	991	20.9%	71.8%
Alaska Airlines	302	19.5%	70.8%

The last column is the share of filed delay minutes coded as carrier delay or late-arriving aircraft, as opposed to extreme weather or air traffic control. It records how the minutes were filed, not who was at fault. Each airline guide carries that carrier's national record; the accountability index sets out why late inbound aircraft is grouped with carrier delay, and publishes the whole table as a downloadable file.

Figures cover May 2026, a single reporting month, from the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics On-Time Performance database. Retrieved 2026-07-28. Reporting under 14 CFR part 234 covers domestic US scheduled service only, so no international route appears — including anything to or from Mexico.

Airlines based at ORD

Carriers based here, which usually means more non-stops and more daily frequencies to fall back on if something goes wrong.

American AirlinesAA United AirlinesUA

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FAQ

ORD — common questions

Terminals, transfers and getting into the city.

How do you get from O'Hare to downtown Chicago?

The CTA Blue Line from beneath Terminal 2 runs twenty-four hours a day and reaches the Loop in about 45 minutes for a couple of dollars, which makes it the best option for most visitors and often the fastest in bad traffic. A taxi or ride-hailing covers the eighteen miles in thirty minutes on a good day and well over an hour in either rush hour. Metra commuter rail to Union Station is an option on weekdays if that is your destination.

Are O'Hare terminals connected?

Terminals 1, 2 and 3 are all connected behind security, so a connection among them requires no re-screening — just a walk of ten to twenty minutes. Terminal 5 is separate, reached by the free Airport Transit System on the public side, which means clearing security again when you get there.

How long should I allow for a connection at O'Hare?

An hour is often workable between Terminals 1, 2 and 3, because they are joined airside. If Terminal 5 is involved at either end, allow two hours, and add immigration and customs time on top if you are arriving from abroad. In winter, treat the published minimums with suspicion and leave more room than the schedule technically requires.

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