Carrier route record
UARSW→ORD
United Airlines · Fort Myers to Chicago
- 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 RSW to ORD lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over 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 74.3% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate United on RSW to ORD from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,593 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.68%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.5%
Every carrier on RSW to ORD, 3,232 flights
These figures cover 1,612 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 RSW to ORD
United flew 1,612 of the 3,232 flights on RSW to ORD, about 50% of it. Its 80.7% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 80.7% to Southwest at 56.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,612 | 80.7% | 73 min | 0.68% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 1,116 | 74.3% | 91 min | 1.97% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 36 | 71.4% | 97 min | 2.78% | C |
| Spirit Airlines | 365 | 70.1% | 77 min | 5.21% | C− |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 103 | 56.0% | 78 min | 1.94% | D |
Spirit Airlines cancels 5.2% 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 RSW to ORD
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 26 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am196 flights92.8%
- 8am–11am310 flights92.1%
- 11am–2pm383 flights86.8%
- 2pm–5pm593 flights69.7%
- 5pm–8pm130 flights66.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.8% of the time, against 66.9% for the evening window. That is 26 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 593 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on RSW to ORD through the year
July is the worst month at 73.9% on time, 17 points below September, the best at 91.3%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. March was the busiest month here, with 208 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 85.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.9%. 10 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. National Airspace System accounts for 56% of the 22,000 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.
- 56%National Airspace System
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 11%Extreme weather
- 8%Carrier
Extreme weather accounts for 11% 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 1.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 22,451 reported delay minutes.
56% 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 13,000 minutes out of 22,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.68%, 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
6.3% 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 a little over 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 81.8% 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 RSW to ORD
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 91.3% on time and July 73.9%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,593 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- RSW to ORD, every carrier
- United on ORD to RSW, the return leg
- American Airlines on RSW to ORD74.3%
- Spirit Airlines on RSW to ORD70.1%
- Southwest Airlines on RSW to ORD56.0%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Southwest Florida International (RSW) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.