Carrier route record
OOCOU→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Columbia to Chicago
- Flights
- 902
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 44%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on COU to ORD carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.9% 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 902 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so SkyWest on COU to ORD runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 77 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 855 completed flights
Avg delay
116 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.88%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
73.7%
Every carrier on COU to ORD, 2,054 flights
These figures cover 902 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 COU to ORD
SkyWest flew 902 of the 2,054 flights on COU to ORD, about 44% of it. Its 69.6% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 76.9% to SkyWest at 69.6%.
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 1,152 | 76.9% | 83 min | 2.69% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 902 | 69.6% | 116 min | 4.88% | C− |
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on COU to ORD
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 24 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am37 flights75.8%
- 8am–11am350 flights75.5%
- 11am–2pm161 flights63.0%
- 2pm–5pm319 flights67.4%
- 5pm–8pm35 flights51.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.6% on time, against 75.8% 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 350 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on COU to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 54.5% on time, against 80.0% in July. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 106 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 78.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.0%, a spread of 19 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late SkyWest on COU to ORD runs when it is late
SkyWest on COU to ORD often beats the schedule: 215 of 855 completed flights, 25%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 260 late arrivals split 71 under half an hour, 60 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 129 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early215 flights25.1%
- Within 15 min380 flights44.4%
- 15–29 min late71 flights8.3%
- 30–59 min late60 flights7.0%
- 1–2 hours late50 flights5.8%
- 2+ hours late79 flights9.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 855 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 208 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 18 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 70 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 COU to ORD
The latest arrival of the period was on 8 January 2026, 21 hours 57 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 8 January 2026 | 21 hours 57 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 December 2025 | 17 hours 23 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 18 December 2025 | 15 hours 4 minutes | Carrier |
| 31 January 2026 | 11 hours 28 minutes | Carrier |
| 12 August 2026 | 10 hours 55 minutes | Extreme weather |
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 30,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 30,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. The split is drawn from 30,181 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 75.8% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.88%, against 1.89% 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
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 315 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 66.7% on time across 903 flights, within 3 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. 902 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 COU to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.88% 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. 855 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.