Carrier route record
OOBDL→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Hartford to Chicago
- Flights
- 262
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on BDL to ORD sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 262 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 644 at 78.2% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 78.2% on time across 644 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 255 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.29%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.0%
Every carrier on BDL to ORD, 2,349 flights
These figures cover 262 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 BDL to ORD
SkyWest flew 262 of the 2,349 flights on BDL to ORD, about 11% of it. Its 70.6% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 78.3% to SkyWest at 70.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 78.2% of the time; United Airlines manages 71.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 841 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 141 | 78.3% | 60 min | 2.13% | B |
| Republic Airways | 644 | 78.2% | 69 min | 3.88% | B− |
| American Airlines | 461 | 73.2% | 154 min | 3.25% | C− |
| United Airlines | 841 | 71.5% | 78 min | 1.55% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 262 | 70.6% | 71 min | 2.29% | C |
Republic Airways cancels 3.9% 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 29 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am3 flights—
- 8am–11am44 flights86.4%
- 11am–2pm84 flights81.9%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm131 flights57.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.6% on time, against 86.4% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 131 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on BDL to ORD through the year
- Jul–Sep 202588 flights59.8%
- Oct–Dec 202548 flights62.2%
- Jan–Mar 202620 flights—
- Apr–Jun 2026106 flights81.7%
Scale runs 50% to 85%. 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 70.6% on time across 262 flights.
SkyWest on BDL to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 81.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 59.8%, a swing of 22 points on roughly 87 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 60.0%. 27 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 49% of the 5,322 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.
- 49%National Airspace System
- 28%Carrier
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%Extreme weather
49% 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 2,589 minutes out of 5,322, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 5,322 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.29% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.38%.
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 783 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.4% on time across 263 flights, 7 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 262 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 BDL to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 262 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 70.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 255 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BDL to ORD, every carrier
- SkyWest on ORD to BDL, the return leg
- Envoy Air on BDL to ORD78.3%
- Republic Airways on BDL to ORD78.2%
- American Airlines on BDL to ORD73.2%
- United Airlines on BDL to ORD71.5%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.