Carrier route record
OOCLE→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Cleveland to Chicago
- Flights
- 947
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 19%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on CLE 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 947 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,173 at 77.0% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 77.0% on time across 2,173 flights.
Key figures
On time
68.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 902 completed flights
Avg delay
104 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.44%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.6%
Every carrier on CLE to ORD, 4,897 flights
These figures cover 947 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.9% 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 CLE to ORD
SkyWest flew 947 of the 4,897 flights on CLE to ORD, about 19% of it. Its 68.5% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 77.0% to SkyWest at 68.5%.
The four carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 2,173 | 77.0% | 75 min | 1.47% | B |
| Republic Airways | 543 | 76.6% | 73 min | 6.63% | B− |
| American Airlines | 420 | 74.1% | 118 min | 5.00% | C− |
| Envoy Air | 814 | 73.7% | 73 min | 4.55% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 947 | 68.5% | 104 min | 4.44% | C− |
Republic Airways cancels 6.6% 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 33 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am120 flights89.3%
- 8am–11am206 flights75.4%
- 11am–2pm128 flights64.3%
- 2pm–5pm263 flights66.3%
- 5pm–8pm211 flights56.2%
- 8pm–5am19 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.2% on time, against 89.3% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 263 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on CLE to ORD through the year
January is the weak month at 48.1% on time, against 84.9% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 152 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 74.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 53.8%. 21 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 48% of the 29,000 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.
- 48%Carrier
- 28%National Airspace System
- 14%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, 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 14,000 of the 29,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 29,477 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.44%, 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. 14.9% 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 316 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 runs 66.2% on time across 948 flights, within 2 points 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. 947 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 CLE to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.44% 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. 902 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLE to ORD, every carrier
- SkyWest on ORD to CLE, the return leg
- United Airlines on CLE to ORD77.0%
- Republic Airways on CLE to ORD76.6%
- American Airlines on CLE to ORD74.1%
- Envoy Air on CLE to ORD73.7%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.