Carrier route record
UAORD→RSW
United Airlines · Chicago to Fort Myers
- Flights
- 1,612
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 50%
- 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 RSW lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,612 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 1,116 at 72.4% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, United's ORD to RSW record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 42 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,601 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.50%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.1%
Every carrier on ORD to RSW, 3,239 flights
These figures cover 1,612 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on ORD to RSW
United flew 1,612 of the 3,239 flights on ORD to RSW, about 50% of it. Its 81.8% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 81.8% to Spirit at 60.8%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 72.4% 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 (this page) | 1,612 | 81.8% | 67 min | 0.50% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin 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.
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on ORD to RSW
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 28 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am427 flights92.7%
- 8am–11am550 flights83.0%
- 11am–2pm144 flights82.4%
- 2pm–5pm358 flights73.0%
- 5pm–8pm133 flights64.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.9% on time, against 92.7% for the 5am–8am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 550 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on ORD to RSW through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 91.4% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 207 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 75.8%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
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 19,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 8%Extreme weather
39% 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 19,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 19,441 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 92.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.50%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.1% 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 an hour, 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 runs 80.7% on time across 1,612 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,612 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.
What to do with this
Booking United on ORD to RSW
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 91.4% on time and March 72.9%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,601 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to RSW, every carrier
- United on RSW to ORD, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on ORD to RSW78.0%
- American Airlines on ORD to RSW72.4%
- Spirit Airlines on ORD to RSW60.8%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Southwest Florida International (RSW) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- 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.