Route reliability record
FAR→ORD
Fargo to Chicago
- Flights
- 2,068
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 557 mi
- Carriers
- 2
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, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 2,068 FAR to ORD flights, of which Envoy Air flew 1,060 at 75.1% on time.
Best time to fly FAR to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 76.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 77.2%, against 72.2% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 54 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,004 completed flights
Avg delay
101 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.61%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
75.1% on time across 1,060 flights
These figures cover 2,068 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.8% 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
Which airline is most reliable on FAR to ORD
The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,060 | 75.1% | 77 min | 2.64% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,008 | 69.2% | 121 min | 2.58% | C |
No carrier stands out. Envoy tops the table at 75.1%, 6 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on FAR 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Fargo to Chicago
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. FAR → ORDFargo to Chicago | Envoy Air | 73.1% | 75.1% | 2.64% | 5am–8am, Tue | MQ 4107 07:00 |
| 2. FAR → ORDFargo to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 67.4% | 69.2% | 2.58% | 11am–2pm, Tue | OO 5232 13:52 |
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 10 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am607 flights76.5%
- 8am–11am139 flights68.9%
- 11am–2pm574 flights73.0%
- 2pm–5pm431 flights70.1%
- 5pm–8pm317 flights66.3%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 76.5% of the time, against 66.3% for the evening window. That is 10 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 607 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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 57.8% on time, against 81.2% in September. 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. November was the busiest month here, with 204 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.5%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 56,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Carrier
- 31%National Airspace System
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 20,000 of the 56,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 56,191 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 2.61%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.8% 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 557 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 runs 69.5% on time across 2,065 flights, within 3 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 2,068 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. September runs 81.2% on time and December 57.8%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,004 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FAR to ORD questions
How often is FAR to ORD delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 27.8% of the 2,068 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
Which airline is most reliable on FAR to ORD?
Envoy Air leads at 75.1% on time across 1,060 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 69.2%, a gap of 6 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 FAR to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 76.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 66.3%, 10 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 FAR to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 57.8% on time, compared with 81.2% in September. Across the year that is 23 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 FAR — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on FAR to ORD75.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on FAR to ORD69.2%
- FAR to DEN, a related route70.9%
- LGA to ORD, a related route67.3%
- FAR to MSP, a related route86.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record75.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record69.2%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. FAR to ORD and ORD to FAR 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.