Carrier route record

OOBHM→ORD

SkyWest Airlines · Birmingham to Chicago

Flights: 108
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 BHM to ORD earns a D, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 55.2% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 22 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. Late arrivals average close to two hours. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 108 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on BHM to ORD runs 22 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 224 extra late arrivals.

On time

55.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 105 completed flights

Avg delay

112 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.78%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

77.4%

Every carrier on BHM to ORD, 1,137 flights

These figures cover 108 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 19.0% 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 BHM to ORD

SkyWest flew 108 of the 1,137 flights on BHM to ORD, about 9% of it. Its 55.2% on time is 22 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 100.0% to SkyWest at 55.2%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on BHM to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
PSA Airlinesthin sample	2	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
Republic Airwaysthin sample	256	84.6%	71 min	1.17%	B
Envoy Air	771	78.0%	79 min	1.43%	B
SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample	108	55.2%	112 min	2.78%	D

Departure window

When SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 108 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split SkyWest's BHM to ORD record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 55.2% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

SkyWest on BHM to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 20255 flights—
Oct–Dec 202527 flights—
Jan–Mar 202611 flights—
Apr–Jun 202665 flights53.2%

Scale runs 45% to 60%. 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 55.2% on time across 108 flights.

Split by quarter, SkyWest on BHM to ORD logged 5 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 27 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 11 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 65 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 55.2% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 67% of the 5,246 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.

Carrier
67%
National Airspace System
13%
Late-arriving aircraft
11%
Extreme weather
9%

The largest share of delay minutes, 67%, 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 3,526 of the 5,246 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 5,246 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 2.78%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 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. 19.0% 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 584 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 61.9% on time across 107 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. 108 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 BHM to ORD

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 108 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 55.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 105 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