Carrier route record

UAFSD→ORD

United Airlines · Sioux Falls to Chicago

Flights: 344
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 19%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.

United on FSD to ORD lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 344 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 393 at 76.9% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate United on FSD to ORD from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

81.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 332 completed flights

Avg delay

68 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.91%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

67.6%

Every carrier on FSD to ORD, 1,831 flights

These figures cover 344 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

United against every carrier on FSD to ORD

United flew 344 of the 1,831 flights on FSD to ORD, about 19% of it. Its 81.3% on time is 14 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 67.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 81.3% to SkyWest at 59.3%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 76.9% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 59.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,004 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on FSD to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines (this page)thin 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	1,004	59.3%	104 min	3.88%	D−

SkyWest 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 United runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 344 flights.

5am–8am174 flights78.0%
8am–11am170 flights84.8%
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 84.8% on time for the 8am–11am window against 78.0% for 5am–8am. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 174 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

United on FSD to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 202591 flights87.6%
Oct–Dec 202579 flights80.0%
Jan–Mar 202685 flights79.0%
Apr–Jun 202689 flights78.2%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. 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 81.3% on time across 344 flights.

Quarter by quarter United on FSD to ORD held fairly steady: 87.6% in Jul–Sep 2025, 80.0% in Oct–Dec 2025, 79.0% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 78.2% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 9 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.0% on time and Saturday the weakest at 71.7%. 16 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why United runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 53% of the 4,199 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.

National Airspace System
53%
Carrier
37%
Extreme weather
10%

53% 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 2,214 minutes out of 4,199, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 4,199 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 1,570 of the 4,199 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations run at 2.91%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 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

6.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 55.0% on time across 344 flights, 26 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 26 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 344 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 United on FSD to ORD

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.91% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 332 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures