Carrier route record
OOATW→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Appleton to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,338
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 53%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on ATW to ORD carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.7% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,338 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on ATW to ORD runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 139 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,260 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.68%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.0%
Every carrier on ATW to ORD, 2,515 flights
These figures cover 1,338 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.6% 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 ATW to ORD
SkyWest flew 1,338 of the 2,515 flights on ATW to ORD, most of the route. Its 63.7% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 76.9% to SkyWest at 63.7%.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,177 | 76.9% | 72 min | 3.23% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 1,338 | 63.7% | 93 min | 5.68% | D− |
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 half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am272 flights79.0%
- 8am–11am217 flights70.7%
- 11am–2pm228 flights61.0%
- 2pm–5pm284 flights65.2%
- 5pm–8pm321 flights46.4%
- 8pm–5am16 flights—
Scale runs 40% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 46.4% on time, against 79.0% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 321 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on ATW to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 42.3% on time, against 72.1% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. April was the busiest month here, with 237 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 68.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 56.6%. 12 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 42,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Carrier
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, 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 16,000 of the 42,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 42,319 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 79.0% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.68%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 17.6% 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.
At 160 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 65.7% on time across 1,337 flights, within 2 points 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 1,338 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 SkyWest on ATW to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.68% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,260 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.