Carrier route record
OOFSD→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Sioux Falls to Chicago
- Flights
- 964
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 54%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on FSD to ORD carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, a little over half of flights arrive on time, worth a D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 964 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so SkyWest on FSD to ORD runs 16 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 162 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
61.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 917 completed flights
Avg delay
107 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.25%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
68.9%
Every carrier on FSD to ORD, 1,792 flights
These figures cover 964 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 20.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on FSD to ORD
SkyWest flew 964 of the 1,792 flights on FSD to ORD, most of the route. Its 61.1% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 68.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 82.0% to SkyWest at 61.1%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| 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 (this page) | 964 | 61.1% | 107 min | 4.25% | D− |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When SkyWest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 30 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am274 flights77.0%
- 8am–11am13 flights—
- 11am–2pm289 flights60.6%
- 2pm–5pm116 flights61.7%
- 5pm–8pm272 flights46.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 40% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 46.6% on time, against 77.0% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 289 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on FSD to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 36.9% on time, against 76.7% 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. November was the busiest month here, with 128 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 67.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 47.5%, a spread of 20 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late SkyWest on FSD to ORD runs when it is late
SkyWest on FSD to ORD often beats the schedule: 243 of 917 completed flights, 26%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When SkyWest on FSD to ORD is late it tends to be very late: 187 of its 357 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 93 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early243 flights26.5%
- Within 15 min317 flights34.6%
- 15–29 min late79 flights8.6%
- 30–59 min late91 flights9.9%
- 1–2 hours late94 flights10.3%
- 2+ hours late93 flights10.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 917 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 298 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 26 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 85 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at ORD.
The worst days
Worst days for SkyWest on FSD to ORD
The latest arrival of the period was on 18 December 2025, 16 hours 29 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in December 2025.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 18 December 2025 | 16 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
| 1 February 2026 | 15 hours 32 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 September 2025 | 15 hours 21 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 15 December 2025 | 12 hours 28 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 December 2025 | 11 hours 46 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why SkyWest 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 38,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Carrier
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%Extreme weather
- 17%National Airspace System
- 1%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 18% 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 3.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 38,115 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 15,000 of the 38,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 4.25%, 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 costs
20.4% 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 runs 61.2% on time across 964 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 964 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 SkyWest on FSD to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.25% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; 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. 917 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FSD to ORD, every carrier
- SkyWest on ORD to FSD, the return leg
- United Airlines on FSD to ORD82.0%
- Envoy Air on FSD to ORD76.9%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.