Carrier route record
UAORD→FSD
United Airlines · Chicago to Sioux Falls
- 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 ORD to FSD earns a D, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 55.0% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 23 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. Late arrivals average a little over an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 344 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 77.6%, so United on ORD to FSD runs 23 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 226 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
55.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 333 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.91%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
63.3%
Every carrier on ORD to FSD, 1,829 flights
These figures cover 344 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 20.7% 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
United against every carrier on ORD to FSD
United flew 344 of the 1,829 flights on ORD to FSD, about 19% of it. Its 55.0% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 63.3%. 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 55.0%. 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 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 Airlines (this page)thin 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.
Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 12 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–11am—
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm18 flights—
- 5pm–8pm33 flights63.3%
- 8pm–5am292 flights51.4%
Scale runs 45% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 51.4% on time, against 63.3% for the 5pm–8pm 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 292 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on ORD to FSD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202590 flights39.8%
- Oct–Dec 202578 flights51.3%
- Jan–Mar 202685 flights69.5%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights59.8%
Scale runs 30% to 75%. 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 55.0% on time across 344 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 39.8%, a swing of 30 points on roughly 86 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 66.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 47.8%. 19 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 11,000 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.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
51% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 10,873 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 3,911 of the 11,000 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 20.7% 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 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.3% on time across 344 flights, 26 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 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 ORD to FSD
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 5pm–8pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 333 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 FSD62.2%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.