Route reliability record
ORD→FAR
Chicago to Fargo
- Flights
- 2,065
- 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, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,065 ORD to FAR flights, of which Envoy Air flew 1,060 at 76.0% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to FAR: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 73.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 74.3%, against 69.5% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 81 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,998 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.91%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
76.0% on time across 1,060 flights
These figures cover 2,065 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.1% 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 ORD to FAR
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 76.0% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 62.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,005 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,060 | 76.0% | 62 min | 2.64% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,005 | 62.6% | 85 min | 3.18% | D− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 3.2% 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.
Flight by flight
Flights on ORD to FAR
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 Chicago to Fargo
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. ORD → FARChicago to Fargo | Envoy Air | 74.0% | 76.0% | 2.64% | 8am–11am, Sat | MQ 3377 22:00 |
| 2. ORD → FARChicago to Fargo | SkyWest Airlines | 60.6% | 62.6% | 3.18% | 11am–2pm, Tue | OO 4778 08:45 |
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 17 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am704 flights73.6%
- 11am–2pm328 flights70.8%
- 2pm–5pm466 flights71.3%
- 5pm–8pm181 flights56.3%
- 8pm–5am386 flights64.8%
Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.3% on time, against 73.6% for the 8am–11am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 704 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 34 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 47.9% on time, against 81.5% 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 74.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.3%. 8 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 46,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 46,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 46,114 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 73.6% on time 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.1% 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 72.2% on time across 2,068 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 2,065 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 FAR after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.91% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over 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. 1,998 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to FAR questions
How often is ORD to FAR delayed?
Roughly 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 30.5% of the 2,065 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ORD to FAR?
Envoy Air leads at 76.0% on time across 1,060 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 62.6%, a gap of 13 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 ORD to FAR?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 73.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 56.3%, 17 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 ORD to FAR?
December is the weakest month at 47.9% on time, compared with 81.5% in September. Across the year that is 34 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
- FAR to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ORD to FAR76.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to FAR62.6%
- ORD to LGA, a related route67.3%
- DEN to FAR, a related route77.7%
- ORD to BOS, a related route67.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record76.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record62.6%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. ORD to FAR and FAR to ORD 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.