Carrier route record

OOALB→ORD

SkyWest Airlines · Albany to Chicago

Flights: 204
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 9%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.

SkyWest on ALB to ORD sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 204 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 756 at 81.1% on time.

Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 81.1% on time across 756 flights.

On time

73.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 199 completed flights

Avg delay

82 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.45%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

76.6%

Every carrier on ALB to ORD, 2,303 flights

These figures cover 204 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.0% 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

SkyWest against every carrier on ALB to ORD

SkyWest flew 204 of the 2,303 flights on ALB to ORD, about 9% of it. Its 73.9% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 76.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 81.1% to Republic at 71.8%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 81.1% of the time; Republic Airways manages 71.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 587 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ALB to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air	756	81.1%	83 min	2.12%	B
United Airlines	756	76.4%	95 min	1.85%	B
SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample	204	73.9%	82 min	2.45%	C
Republic Airways	587	71.8%	75 min	4.43%	C−

Republic Airways cancels 4.4% 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 SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 33 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am33 flights90.9%
11am–2pm45 flights86.7%
2pm–5pm40 flights64.1%
5pm–8pm45 flights57.8%
8pm–5am41 flights73.0%

Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.8% on time, against 90.9% for the 8am–11am 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 45 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on ALB to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 202524 flights—
Oct–Dec 202556 flights61.8%
Jan–Mar 20265 flights—
Apr–Jun 2026119 flights83.5%

Scale runs 55% to 90%. 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 73.9% on time across 204 flights.

Split by quarter, SkyWest on ALB to ORD logged 24 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 56 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 5 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 119 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 73.9% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 81.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.7%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest 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 4,239 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
40%
Late-arriving aircraft
32%
National Airspace System
22%
Extreme weather
7%

The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, 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 1,683 of the 4,239 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,239 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 90.9% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 2.45% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

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. 9.0% 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.

The 723 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 74.4% on time across 205 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 204 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 SkyWest on ALB to ORD

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 204 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 73.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 199 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures