Carrier route record
OOCLE→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Cleveland to Chicago
- Flights
- 854
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 17%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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: 4.2% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% 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 854 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 587 at 76.9% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 76.9% on time across 587 flights.
Key figures
On time
69.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 816 completed flights
Avg delay
97 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.22%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
74.5%
Every carrier on CLE to ORD, 4,895 flights
These figures cover 854 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on CLE to ORD
SkyWest flew 854 of the 4,895 flights on CLE to ORD, about 17% of it. Its 69.2% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 76.9% to SkyWest at 69.2%.
The four carriers here are closely matched: 2 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 587 | 76.9% | 75 min | 6.64% | B− |
| United Airlines | 2,181 | 75.6% | 79 min | 1.47% | B |
| American Airlines | 395 | 75.0% | 109 min | 3.54% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 878 | 74.9% | 78 min | 4.33% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 854 | 69.2% | 97 min | 4.22% | 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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 27 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am114 flights85.2%
- 8am–11am241 flights74.4%
- 11am–2pm96 flights60.0%
- 2pm–5pm216 flights68.4%
- 5pm–8pm168 flights58.6%
- 8pm–5am19 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.6% on time, against 85.2% 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 241 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 124 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 77.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 55.0%, a spread of 22 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late SkyWest on CLE to ORD runs when it is late
SkyWest on CLE to ORD often beats the schedule: 265 of 816 completed flights, 32%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 251 late arrivals split 75 under half an hour, 53 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 123 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early265 flights32.5%
- Within 15 min300 flights36.8%
- 15–29 min late75 flights9.2%
- 30–59 min late53 flights6.5%
- 1–2 hours late59 flights7.2%
- 2+ hours late64 flights7.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 816 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
45 of 247 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 18% of them. In the other direction, 49 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at ORD.
The worst days
Worst days for SkyWest on CLE to ORD
The latest arrival of the period was on 14 February 2026, 33 hours 23 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 14 February 2026 | 33 hours 23 minutes | Carrier |
| 4 March 2026 | 24 hours 28 minutes | Carrier |
| 30 July 2026 | 10 hours 40 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 December 2025 | 7 hours 24 minutes | Carrier |
| 10 August 2026 | 6 hours 16 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 48% of the 24,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%Carrier
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 12,000 of the 24,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 24,367 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.22%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
15.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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 67.3% on time across 853 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. 854 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 4.22% 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. 816 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
- Republic Airways on CLE to ORD76.9%
- United Airlines on CLE to ORD75.6%
- American Airlines on CLE to ORD75.0%
- Envoy Air on CLE to ORD74.9%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.