Carrier route record
NKDFW→ORD
Spirit Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Chicago
- Flights
- 129
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 2%
- Carriers
- 7
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Spirit Airlines.
Spirit on DFW to ORD draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 129 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,010 at 71.7% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 71.7% on time across 2,010 flights.
Key figures
On time
66.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 127 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.55%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.6%
Every carrier on DFW to ORD, 6,964 flights
These figures cover 129 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.0% 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
Spirit against every carrier on DFW to ORD
Spirit flew 129 of the 6,964 flights on DFW to ORD, about 2% of it. Its 66.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 67.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number six of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 87.5% to American at 65.4%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 71.7% of the time; American Airlines manages 65.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 4,239 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 8 | 87.5% | 15 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 12 | 75.0% | 61 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 2,010 | 71.7% | 94 min | 1.79% | C |
| Frontier Airlines | 431 | 69.4% | 95 min | 3.25% | C− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 135 | 68.5% | 76 min | 5.19% | C− |
| Spirit Airlines (this page)thin sample | 129 | 66.9% | 93 min | 1.55% | C |
| American Airlines | 4,239 | 65.4% | 77 min | 3.85% | C− |
American Airlines cancels 3.9% 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.
Departure window
When Spirit runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 26 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am43 flights88.1%
- 8am–11am14 flights—
- 11am–2pm43 flights61.9%
- 2pm–5pm25 flights—
- 5pm–8pm4 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 61.9% on time against 88.1% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 43 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Spirit on DFW to ORD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights30.0%
- Oct–Dec 202575 flights79.5%
- Jan–Mar 20267 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202617 flights—
Scale runs 20% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 66.9% on time across 129 flights.
Split by quarter, Spirit on DFW to ORD logged 30 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 75 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 7 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 17 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 66.9% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why Spirit runs late on this route
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 3,902 reported delay minutes.
- 42%National Airspace System
- 34%Carrier
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
42% 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 1,637 minutes out of 3,902, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 3,902 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.55% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 15.0% 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.
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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 63.6% on time across 124 flights, 3 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 129 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking Spirit on DFW to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 129 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 66.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 127 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to ORD, every carrier
- Spirit on ORD to DFW, the return leg
- United Airlines on DFW to ORD71.7%
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to ORD69.4%
- Envoy Air on DFW to ORD68.5%
- American Airlines on DFW to ORD65.4%
- Spirit Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.