Carrier route record
WNORD→RSW
Southwest Airlines · Chicago to Fort Myers
- Flights
- 103
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 3%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on ORD to RSW lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 103 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,612 at 81.8% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 81.8% on time across 1,612 flights.
Key figures
On time
78.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 100 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.91%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.1%
Every carrier on ORD to RSW, 3,239 flights
These figures cover 103 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.0% 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
Southwest against every carrier on ORD to RSW
Southwest flew 103 of the 3,239 flights on ORD to RSW, about 3% of it. Its 78.0% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 81.8% to Spirit at 60.8%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 81.8% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 60.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 372 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 1,612 | 81.8% | 67 min | 0.50% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 103 | 78.0% | 50 min | 2.91% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 36 | 77.1% | 75 min | 2.78% | B |
| American Airlines | 1,116 | 72.4% | 70 min | 1.88% | C |
| Spirit Airlines | 372 | 60.8% | 79 min | 5.38% | D− |
Spirit Airlines cancels 5.4% 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 Southwest 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 103 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Southwest's ORD to RSW record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 78.0% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Southwest on ORD to RSW through the year
- Oct–Dec 202516 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202641 flights71.8%
- Apr–Jun 202646 flights89.1%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. 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 78.0% on time across 103 flights.
Split by quarter, Southwest on ORD to RSW logged 16 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 41 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 46 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 78.0% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 53% of the 1,105 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.
- 53%National Airspace System
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%Carrier
53% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 589 minutes out of 1,105, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 1,105 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 81.7% 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 costs
8.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,120 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 56.0% on time across 103 flights, 22 points below 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 22 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 103 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 Southwest on ORD to RSW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.91% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 50 minutes; 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. 100 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to RSW, every carrier
- Southwest on RSW to ORD, the return leg
- United Airlines on ORD to RSW81.8%
- American Airlines on ORD to RSW72.4%
- Spirit Airlines on ORD to RSW60.8%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Southwest Florida International (RSW) 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.