Yeah but the flight itself should only take an hour-40mins or so...
Here they landed in WI...hmmm...maybe they circled to assess the situation? That could be I suppose...
I fly out of a couple of central Illinois airports to O’Hare. The aircraft doesn’t get much higher than ~16K feet before starting descent . The airports are about the same distance as Madison. I think it is likely they had to burn off some altitude and assess the situation as you suggest.