Route reliability record
FSD→ORD
Sioux Falls to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,792
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 462 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,792 FSD to ORD flights, of which Envoy Air flew 393 at 76.9% on time.
Best time to fly FSD to ORD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 80.5% of the time and Saturday flights 73.5%, against 68.9% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 84 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,715 completed flights
Avg delay
94 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.79%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
76.9% on time across 393 flights
These figures cover 1,792 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.9% 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 FSD to ORD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 76.9% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 61.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 964 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 345 | 82.0% | 70 min | 2.90% | B |
| Envoy Air | 393 | 76.9% | 68 min | 3.82% | B− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 30 | 70.0% | 84 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 60 | 63.8% | 57 min | 3.33% | D− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 964 | 61.1% | 107 min | 4.25% | D− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 4.3% 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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Sioux Falls 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. FSD → ORDSioux Falls to Chicago | Envoy Air | 74.0% | 76.9% | 3.82% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 2. FSD → ORDSioux Falls to Chicago | SkyWest Airlines | 58.5% | 61.1% | 4.25% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
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 26 points, against 16 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am630 flights80.5%
- 8am–11am139 flights76.3%
- 11am–2pm393 flights64.4%
- 2pm–5pm233 flights64.3%
- 5pm–8pm397 flights54.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 54.2% on time, against 80.5% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 630 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter FSD 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 FSD to ORD, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 80.5% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 54.2%, a wide gap of 26.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am80.5%
- 8–11am76.3%
- 11am–2pm64.4%
- 2–5pm64.3%
- 5–8pm54.2%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 45% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 36 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 45.5% on time, against 81.6% in May. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 186 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 73.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.8%, a spread of 12 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 50,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Carrier
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%National Airspace System
- 16%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 16% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 50,208 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 18,000 of the 50,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.79%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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
14.9% 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.
At 462 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 63.5% on time across 1,790 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,792 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 delay figures matter less here than the 3.79% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,715 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FSD to ORD questions
How often is FSD 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 31.1% of the 1,792 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on FSD to ORD?
Envoy Air leads at 76.9% on time across 393 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 61.1%, a gap of 16 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 FSD to ORD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 80.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 54.2%, 26 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 FSD to ORD?
December is the weakest month at 45.5% on time, compared with 81.6% in May. Across the year that is 36 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 FSD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- United Airlines on FSD to ORD82.0%
- Envoy Air on FSD to ORD76.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on FSD to ORD61.1%
- FSD to DEN, a related route80.2%
- LGA to ORD, a related route66.7%
- FSD to MSP, a related route84.3%
- United Airlines on-time record82.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record76.9%
- PSA Airlines on-time record70.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. FSD to ORD and ORD to FSD 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.