Carrier route record
OOCMH→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Columbus to Chicago
- Flights
- 535
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on CMH to ORD draws a D−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is close to two hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 535 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,512 at 83.6% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 83.6% on time across 1,512 flights.
Key figures
On time
64.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 504 completed flights
Avg delay
105 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.79%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.5%
Every carrier on CMH to ORD, 4,841 flights
These figures cover 535 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.7% 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 CMH to ORD
SkyWest flew 535 of the 4,841 flights on CMH to ORD, about 11% of it. Its 64.5% on time is 10 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 85.6% to SkyWest at 64.5%. Two 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; United Airlines manages 66.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,213 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 128 | 85.6% | 95 min | 2.34% | A |
| Republic Airways | 1,512 | 83.6% | 68 min | 2.18% | B |
| Envoy Air | 1,399 | 74.8% | 100 min | 2.07% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 54 | 69.8% | 75 min | 1.85% | C |
| United Airlines | 1,213 | 66.3% | 85 min | 1.81% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 535 | 64.5% | 105 min | 5.79% | D− |
The spread between Republic and United is 17 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 17 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 50 points, against 17 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am71 flights82.9%
- 11am–2pm80 flights75.3%
- 2pm–5pm269 flights65.9%
- 5pm–8pm41 flights51.5%
- 8pm–5am74 flights33.3%
Scale runs 25% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 33.3% on time, against 82.9% for the 8am–11am 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 269 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on CMH to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 38.5% on time, against 77.9% in June. 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 85 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 52.7%. 24 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 19,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 18,862 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, 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 7,601 of the 19,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 5.79%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in fifteen 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. 18.7% 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 296 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 68.3% on time across 535 flights, 4 points above 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 535 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 CMH to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.79% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 504 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CMH to ORD, every carrier
- SkyWest on ORD to CMH, the return leg
- American Airlines on CMH to ORD85.6%
- Republic Airways on CMH to ORD83.6%
- Envoy Air on CMH to ORD74.8%
- United Airlines on CMH to ORD66.3%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) 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.