Carrier route record
OOBNA→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Nashville to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,467
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 29%
- Carriers
- 9
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on BNA to ORD carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.7% 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 C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,467 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 562 at 73.4% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 73.4% on time across 562 flights.
Key figures
On time
65.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,411 completed flights
Avg delay
102 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.68%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.4%
Every carrier on BNA to ORD, 5,024 flights
These figures cover 1,467 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.1% 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 BNA to ORD
SkyWest flew 1,467 of the 5,024 flights on BNA to ORD, about 29% of it. Its 65.9% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number eight of nine carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 76.7% to American at 65.5%. Four 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 73.4% of the time; American Airlines manages 65.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 384 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 338 | 76.7% | 59 min | 1.48% | B |
| Republic Airways | 562 | 73.4% | 80 min | 2.14% | C |
| Envoy Air | 782 | 73.0% | 75 min | 3.84% | C− |
| United Airlines | 1,380 | 72.3% | 93 min | 2.10% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 81 | 67.9% | 82 min | 3.70% | C− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 27 | 66.7% | 45 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 3 | 66.7% | 30 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 1,467 | 65.9% | 102 min | 3.68% | C− |
| American Airlines | 384 | 65.5% | 120 min | 1.82% | C |
Envoy Air cancels 3.8% 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.
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on BNA to ORD
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 30 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am619 flights72.9%
- 8am–11am254 flights75.2%
- 11am–2pm119 flights75.9%
- 2pm–5pm243 flights52.2%
- 5pm–8pm205 flights46.2%
- 8pm–5am27 flights—
Scale runs 40% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 46.2% on time, against 75.9% for the 11am–2pm 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 619 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on BNA to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 53.7% on time, against 78.9% in May. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 174 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 72.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 56.3%. 16 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. Carrier accounts for 56% of the 49,000 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.
- 56%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 15%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 56%, 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 27,000 of the 49,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 49,242 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.68%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 25 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. 17.1% 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 409 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 61.0% on time across 1,467 flights, 5 points below 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,467 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 BNA to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.68% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,411 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BNA to ORD, every carrier
- SkyWest on ORD to BNA, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on BNA to ORD76.7%
- Republic Airways on BNA to ORD73.4%
- Envoy Air on BNA to ORD73.0%
- United Airlines on BNA to ORD72.3%
- American Airlines on BNA to ORD65.5%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- 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.