Carrier route record
OOCLT→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Charlotte to Chicago
- Flights
- 160
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 4%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on CLT to ORD lands a B−, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 2.1 hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 160 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 372 at 83.6% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 83.6% on time across 372 flights.
Key figures
On time
81.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 152 completed flights
Avg delay
128 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.2%
Every carrier on CLT to ORD, 4,300 flights
These figures cover 160 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on CLT to ORD
SkyWest flew 160 of the 4,300 flights on CLT to ORD, about 4% of it. Its 81.6% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 83.6% to Frontier at 62.4%. One 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 83.6% of the time; American Airlines manages 71.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 3,000 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 372 | 83.6% | 80 min | 2.96% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 160 | 81.6% | 128 min | 5.00% | B− |
| United Airlines | 611 | 71.1% | 87 min | 2.13% | C |
| American Airlines | 3,000 | 71.0% | 72 min | 2.87% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 157 | 62.4% | 122 min | 4.46% | D− |
The spread between Republic and American is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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 17 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am112 flights85.0%
- 8am–11am6 flights—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm6 flights—
- 5pm–8pm36 flights67.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 85.0% of the time, against 67.6% for the evening window. That is 17 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 112 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on CLT to ORD through the year
- Jan–Mar 202674 flights83.1%
- Apr–Jun 202686 flights80.2%
Scale runs 70% to 90%. 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 81.6% on time across 160 flights.
Split by quarter, SkyWest on CLT to ORD logged 74 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 86 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 81.6% annual figure is the one to use.
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 3,593 reported delay minutes.
- 31%Extreme weather
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 31% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 5.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 3,593 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 85.0% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.00%, 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
6.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 2.1 hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 599 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 53.6% on time across 160 flights, 28 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 28 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 160 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 CLT to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.00% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 2.1 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. 152 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLT to ORD, every carrier
- SkyWest on ORD to CLT, the return leg
- Republic Airways on CLT to ORD83.6%
- United Airlines on CLT to ORD71.1%
- American Airlines on CLT to ORD71.0%
- Frontier Airlines on CLT to ORD62.4%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.