Route reliability record
ORD→FSD
Chicago to Sioux Falls
- Flights
- 1,829
- Period
- July 2025 to June 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 1.8% 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 1,829 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 71.5% of the time and Saturday flights 70.7%, against 63.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 143 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,761 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.50%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
72.5% on time across 390 flights
These figures cover 1,829 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.5% 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 FSD
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 72.5% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 62.2%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 | 1,005 | 62.2% | 103 min | 3.68% | D− |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 344 | 55.0% | 73 min | 2.91% | 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.
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 | 59.9% | 62.2% | 3.68% | 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 15 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am453 flights71.5%
- 11am–2pm196 flights64.7%
- 2pm–5pm384 flights63.1%
- 5pm–8pm186 flights63.1%
- 8pm–5am610 flights56.5%
Scale runs 50% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.5% on time, against 71.5% 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 610 flights scheduled in it.
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 70.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 57.4%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 43% of the 56,000 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.
- 43%Carrier
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%Extreme weather
- 13%National Airspace System
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 55,599 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, 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 24,000 of the 56,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.50%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 16.5% 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 67.6% on time across 1,831 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,829 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 3.50% 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. 1,761 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 36.7% of the 1,829 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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 62.2%, a gap of 10 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 71.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 56.5%, 15 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 FSD62.2%
- United Airlines on ORD to FSD55.0%
- ORD to LGA, a related route67.3%
- DEN to FSD, a related route81.6%
- ORD to BOS, a related route67.6%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.