Route reliability record
ORD→FSD
Chicago to Sioux Falls
- Flights
- 1,790
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 462 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three 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 1,790 ORD to FSD flights, of which Envoy Air flew 390 at 72.5% on time.
Best time to fly ORD to FSD: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 70.3% of the time and Saturday flights 71.2%, against 63.5% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 138 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,725 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.52%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
72.5% on time across 390 flights
These figures cover 1,790 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.8% 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 ORD to FSD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 72.5% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 61.2%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 30 | 73.3% | 81 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| Envoy Air | 390 | 72.5% | 52 min | 3.85% | C− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 60 | 63.8% | 59 min | 3.33% | D− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 964 | 61.2% | 103 min | 3.73% | D− |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 346 | 59.1% | 67 min | 2.89% | D |
Envoy Air 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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Chicago to Sioux Falls
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 → FSDChicago to Sioux Falls | Envoy Air | 69.7% | 72.5% | 3.85% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 2. ORD → FSDChicago to Sioux Falls | SkyWest Airlines | 58.9% | 61.2% | 3.73% | 8am–11am, 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 12 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am396 flights70.3%
- 11am–2pm199 flights64.8%
- 2pm–5pm387 flights63.8%
- 5pm–8pm186 flights62.6%
- 8pm–5am622 flights58.7%
Scale runs 50% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 58.7% on time, against 70.3% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 622 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ORD to FSD 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 ORD to FSD, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 70.3% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 58.7%, a wide gap of 11.6 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am70.3%
- 11am–2pm64.8%
- 2–5pm63.8%
- 5–8pm62.6%
- 8pm–5am58.7%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 32 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 77.9% 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 71.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 55.1%, a spread of 16 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 53,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Carrier
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%Extreme weather
- 15%National Airspace System
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 2.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 53,471 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 21,000 of the 53,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.52%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
16.8% 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 68.9% on time across 1,792 flights, 5 points above 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 1,790 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 FSD after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.52% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 1,725 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORD to FSD questions
How often is ORD to FSD 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 36.5% of the 1,790 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 ORD to FSD?
Envoy Air leads at 72.5% on time across 390 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 61.2%, a gap of 11 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 FSD?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 70.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 58.7%, 12 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 FSD?
December is the weakest month at 45.5% on time, compared with 77.9% in May. Across the year that is 32 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
- FSD to ORD — the return legseparate record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ORD to FSD72.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to FSD61.2%
- United Airlines on ORD to FSD59.1%
- ORD to LGA, a related route66.6%
- DEN to FSD, a related route82.8%
- ORD to BOS, a related route66.6%
- PSA Airlines on-time record73.3%
- Envoy Air on-time record72.5%
- Republic Airways on-time record63.8%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. ORD to FSD and FSD 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.