DFW to ORD flight delays
Dallas/Fort Worth, TX (DFW) Chicago, IL (ORD) · 802 miles
667 flights · March 2025 – August 2026 · US Bureau of Transportation Statistics
58.07%
Arrived on time
Within 15 minutes of schedule
4.35%
Cancelled
Share of scheduled flights
90 min
When late, late by
Average across delayed arrivals
39 min
Delay per flight
Averaged over every flight flown
What the record says about this route
Which airline you fly changes the odds here. United Airlines arrived on time 10 points more often than American Airlines over the same period on the same route — same airports, same weather, same air traffic control. A gap that survives all of that is about how the two airlines are run.
Cancellation, not delay, is the risk worth pricing here: 4.35% of scheduled flights never operated. A late flight still gets you there. A cancelled one leaves you rebooking, and on a route with few daily departures that can mean losing a day.
This is a late route. Flights from Dallas/Fort Worth to Chicago miss their scheduled arrival often enough that a tight connection at the far end is a connection at risk.
Which airline should you fly on this route?
Over March 2025 – August 2026, United Airlines arrived on time most often on DFW to ORD. American Airlines was late most often.
Every airline on DFW to ORD
Ranked by how many flights each one operated. A carrier with fewer than 100 flights in the period is listed but not graded.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Avg delay | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 390 | 54.64% | 5.13% | 80 min | F |
| United Airlines | 201 | 64.62% | 2.49% | 109 min | D |
| Frontier Airlines | 40 | 50% | 2.5% | 111 min | — |
| Envoy Air | 30 | 59.26% | 10% | 86 min | — |
| SkyWest Airlines | 6 | 100% | 0% | — | — |
Other routes from Dallas/Fort Worth
Common questions
Are flights from Dallas/Fort Worth to Chicago usually delayed?
58.07% of flights on the DFW to ORD route arrived within 15 minutes of schedule, so roughly 4 in every ten arrived late. That is worse than the average route in this record.
Which airline is most on time from Dallas/Fort Worth to Chicago?
United Airlines, at 64.62% on time across 201 flights. The least punctual on the route was American Airlines at 54.64%.
How often are DFW to ORD flights cancelled?
4.35% of scheduled flights did not operate — about 44 in every thousand. That is high enough that cancellation, not delay, is the risk worth planning around.
When DFW to ORD flights are late, how late are they?
About 90 minutes on average across the flights that arrived more than 15 minutes behind schedule.
What these figures do and do not tell you
Everything on this page is counted from the flights that actually operated on DFW to ORD during March 2025 – August 2026, as reported by the airlines to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics. "On time" is the federal definition: arriving at the gate within 15 minutes of the scheduled time.
A route's record is a description of the past, not a forecast. Weather, air traffic control and the aircraft's earlier flights that day drive most delays, and none of them are predictable from a historical rate. What the record does tell you is whether this route runs late more often than others, and which carrier on it has the better history — which is the part you can actually act on when you book.
Cancellations are counted separately from delays because they are a different problem for a traveller: a late flight still gets you there. How the grade is calculated →