Route reliability record
DFW→ORD
Dallas-Fort Worth to Chicago
- Flights
- 7,115
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 802 mi
- Carriers
- 7
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 7,115 DFW to ORD flights, of which United Airlines flew 2,080 at 70.9% on time.
Best time to fly DFW to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 80.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 74.6%, against 68.8% for the route overall.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 70.9% on time across 2,080 flights.
Key figures
On time
68.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 6,874 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.75%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
70.9% on time across 2,080 flights
These figures cover 7,115 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.1% 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 DFW to ORD
The three carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 8 | 87.5% | 15 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 99 | 78.4% | 84 min | 2.02% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 12 | 75.0% | 61 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 2,080 | 70.9% | 96 min | 1.78% | C |
| Frontier Airlines | 461 | 70.0% | 99 min | 3.25% | C− |
| American Airlines | 4,301 | 67.5% | 74 min | 3.14% | C− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 154 | 66.7% | 86 min | 4.55% | C− |
Frontier Airlines cancels 3.3% 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 DFW 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 Dallas-Fort Worth 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 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DFW → ORDDallas-Fort Worth to Chicago | United Airlines | 69.6% | 70.9% | 1.78% | 8am–11am, Tue | UA 1517 19:27 |
| 2. DAL → MDWDallas to Chicago | Southwest Airlines | 68.2% | 69.6% | 2.05% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. DFW → ORDDallas-Fort Worth to Chicago | Frontier Airlines | 67.7% | 70.0% | 3.25% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 4. DFW → ORDDallas-Fort Worth to Chicago | American Airlines | 65.4% | 67.5% | 3.14% | 5am–8am, Thu | AA 1290 17:12 |
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 24 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am1,302 flights80.9%
- 8am–11am1,264 flights78.9%
- 11am–2pm1,063 flights67.9%
- 2pm–5pm1,196 flights61.4%
- 5pm–8pm1,392 flights56.6%
- 8pm–5am898 flights66.2%
Scale runs 50% to 85%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.6% on time, against 80.9% 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 1,392 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DFW 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 DFW to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 80.9% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 56.6%, a wide gap of 24.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am80.9%
- 8–11am78.9%
- 11am–2pm67.9%
- 2–5pm61.4%
- 5–8pm56.6%
- 8pm–5am66.2%
best all US flightsScale 50% 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.
June is the worst month at 58.1% on time, 22 points below February, the best at 79.8%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. August was the busiest month here, with 694 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.6%, a spread of 13 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 175,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 175,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 175,150 reported delay minutes.
33% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 57,000 minutes out of 175,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 2.75%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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
13.1% 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.
The 802 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The return leg runs 70.4% on time across 7,111 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 7,115 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 calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 79.8% on time and June 58.1%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 6,874 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DFW to ORD questions
How often is DFW 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 31.2% of the 7,115 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DFW to ORD?
United Airlines leads at 70.9% on time across 2,080 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 67.5%, a gap of 3 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 DFW to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 80.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 56.6%, 24 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 June delays on DFW to ORD?
June is the weakest month at 58.1% on time, compared with 79.8% in February. 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 DFW — the return legseparate record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- United Airlines on DFW to ORD70.9%
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to ORD70.0%
- American Airlines on DFW to ORD67.5%
- Envoy Air on DFW to ORD66.7%
- DFW to ATL, a related route75.6%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- DFW to LGA, a related route66.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record87.5%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record78.4%
- Republic Airways on-time record75.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DFW to ORD and ORD to DFW 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.