Carrier route record

OOCHA→ORD

SkyWest Airlines · Chattanooga to Chicago

Flights: 510
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 54%
Carriers: 3

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

SkyWest on CHA 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, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 510 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on CHA to ORD runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 79 extra late arrivals.

On time

69.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 479 completed flights

Avg delay

85 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

5.10%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

70.2%

Every carrier on CHA to ORD, 953 flights

These figures cover 510 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.7% 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 CHA to ORD

SkyWest flew 510 of the 953 flights on CHA to ORD, most of the route. Its 69.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 70.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 75.4% to Republic at 66.8%. 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 CHA to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Airthin sample	205	75.4%	58 min	2.44%	B
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	510	69.7%	85 min	5.10%	C−
Republic Airwaysthin sample	238	66.8%	63 min	3.36%	C−

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 24 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–8am104 flights79.2%
8am–11am137 flights79.1%
11am–2pm40 flights69.4%
2pm–5pm109 flights64.4%
5pm–8pm120 flights55.4%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 55.4% on time, against 79.2% 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 137 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on CHA to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 2025111 flights70.6%
Oct–Dec 2025156 flights74.7%
Jan–Mar 2026134 flights64.2%
Apr–Jun 2026109 flights68.0%

Scale runs 55% to 80%. 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 69.7% on time across 510 flights.

SkyWest on CHA to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 74.7% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 64.2%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 128 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, Saturday is the strongest day at 82.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 64.6%. 17 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 12,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
37%
Carrier
35%
National Airspace System
25%
Extreme weather
3%

37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 12,358 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 4,369 of the 12,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations run at 5.10%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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. 11.7% 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.

The 501 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 runs 69.0% on time across 510 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 510 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 CHA to ORD

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.10% 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. 479 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