Carrier route record
OOFSD→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Sioux Falls to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,004
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 55%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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: 3.9% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% 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 1,004 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on FSD to ORD runs 18 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 183 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
59.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 956 completed flights
Avg delay
104 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.88%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.6%
Every carrier on FSD to ORD, 1,831 flights
These figures cover 1,004 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 19.2% 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
SkyWest against every carrier on FSD to ORD
SkyWest flew 1,004 of the 1,831 flights on FSD to ORD, most of the route. Its 59.3% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 67.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 81.3% to SkyWest at 59.3%. 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 | 344 | 81.3% | 68 min | 2.91% | 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) | 1,004 | 59.3% | 104 min | 3.88% | D− |
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 31 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am274 flights74.8%
- 8am–11am13 flights—
- 11am–2pm346 flights60.8%
- 2pm–5pm90 flights58.8%
- 5pm–8pm281 flights43.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 35% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 43.9% on time, against 74.8% 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 346 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, Wednesday is the strongest day at 66.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 48.6%. 18 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 44% of the 40,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 44%Carrier
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%Extreme weather
- 14%National Airspace System
- 1%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 17% 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 2.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 40,248 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, 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 18,000 of the 40,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.88%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 19.2% 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.
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 62.2% on time across 1,005 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,004 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 3.88% 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. 956 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 ORD81.3%
- 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 7.04 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.