Carrier route record
UAORD→FSD
United Airlines · Chicago to Sioux Falls
- Flights
- 346
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 19%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on ORD to FSD draws a D. Roughly one flight in two arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 346 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 390 at 72.5% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so United on ORD to FSD runs 18 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 182 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
59.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 335 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.89%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
63.5%
Every carrier on ORD to FSD, 1,790 flights
These figures cover 346 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on ORD to FSD
United flew 346 of the 1,790 flights on ORD to FSD, about 19% of it. Its 59.1% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 63.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 73.3% to United at 59.1%. 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 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 Airlines (this page)thin 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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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 346 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm18 flights—
- 5pm–8pm34 flights61.3%
- 8pm–5am293 flights56.5%
Scale runs 50% to 65%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 61.3% on time. The full set of windows spans 5 points.
Across the year
United on ORD to FSD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights46.7%
- Oct–Dec 202578 flights51.3%
- Jan–Mar 202685 flights69.5%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights59.8%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights60.0%
Scale runs 40% to 75%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 59.1% on time across 346 flights.
United on ORD to FSD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 69.5% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 46.7%, a swing of 23 points on roughly 69 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 70.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 46.8%, a spread of 23 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on ORD to FSD runs when it is late
The 137 late arrivals split 44 under half an hour, 32 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 61 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early54 flights16.1%
- Within 15 min144 flights43.0%
- 15–29 min late44 flights13.1%
- 30–59 min late32 flights9.6%
- 1–2 hours late39 flights11.6%
- 2+ hours late22 flights6.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 335 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
20 of 136 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. In the other direction, 21 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at FSD.
The worst days
Worst days for United on ORD to FSD
The latest arrival of the period was on 30 November 2025, 5 hours 29 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 30 November 2025 | 5 hours 29 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 10 March 2026 | 4 hours 39 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 31 March 2026 | 4 hours 26 minutes | Carrier |
| 30 January 2026 | 3 hours 58 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 5 April 2026 | 3 hours 48 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 9,167 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
54% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 9,167 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 9,167 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 2.89%, against 1.89% 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
18.2% 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 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.0% on time across 345 flights, 23 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 23 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 346 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 ORD to FSD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.89% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5pm–8pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 335 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to FSD, every carrier
- United on FSD to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to FSD72.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to FSD61.2%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.