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DelayAtlas

Carrier route record

OOCAKORD

SkyWest Airlines · Akron to Chicago

Flights
1,474
Period
July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route
75%
Carriers
3
C−GRADE

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

SkyWest on CAK to ORD carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.4% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten 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 1,474 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on CAK to ORD runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 56 extra late arrivals.

Key figures

On time

72.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,406 completed flights

Avg delay

117 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.41%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

71.6%

Every carrier on CAK to ORD, 1,963 flights

These figures cover 1,474 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.7% 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 CAK to ORD

SkyWest flew 1,474 of the 1,963 flights on CAK to ORD, most of the route. Its 72.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 71.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 75.5% to PSA at 69.1%. One 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 CAK to ORD
AirlineFlightsOn timeAvg delayCancelledGrade
Envoy Airthin sample10975.5%76 min2.75%B
SkyWest Airlines (this page)1,47472.0%117 min4.41%C−
PSA Airlines38069.1%110 min7.89%C−

Flight by flight

SkyWest flight numbers on CAK 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 25 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–8am363 flights84.3%
  • 8am–11am405 flights71.9%
  • 11am–2pm1 flights
  • 2pm–5pm364 flights71.2%
  • 5pm–8pm341 flights59.1%
  • 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: 59.1% on time, against 84.3% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 405 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on CAK to ORD through the year

On-time rate by calendar month71J71F66M67A80M81J56J74A84S82O69N57D
Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, July worst

July is the worst month at 56.2% on time, 27 points below September, the best at 83.6%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. May was the busiest month here, with 174 flights.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 76.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 66.5%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

On-time rate by day of the week73.5Mon70.7Tue75.3Wed76.0Thu66.5Fri71.0Sat71.0Sun
Monday: 73.5 percent on time. Tuesday: 70.7 percent on time. Wednesday: 75.3 percent on time. Thursday: 76.0 percent on time. Friday: 66.5 percent on time. Saturday: 71.0 percent on time. Sunday: 71.0 percent on time

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 43% of the 46,000 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.

  • Carrier
    43%
  • Late-arriving aircraft
    31%
  • National Airspace System
    20%
  • Extreme weather
    6%

The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, 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 20,000 of the 46,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 46,243 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 84.3% on time here.

Cancellations run at 4.41%, 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. 15.7% 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 344 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 65.5% on time across 1,474 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 1,474 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 CAK to ORD

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.41% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; 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. 1,406 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.