Carrier route record
OOCVG→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Cincinnati to Chicago
- Flights
- 895
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 19%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on CVG to ORD carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.7% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, a little over half of flights arrive on time, worth a D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 895 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,346 at 77.8% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 77.8% on time across 1,346 flights.
Key figures
On time
58.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 843 completed flights
Avg delay
114 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.70%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.2%
Every carrier on CVG to ORD, 4,630 flights
These figures cover 895 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.9% 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 CVG to ORD
SkyWest flew 895 of the 4,630 flights on CVG to ORD, about 19% of it. Its 58.6% on time is 12 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 77.8% to American at 41.8%. 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 77.8% of the time; United Airlines manages 68.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 946 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,346 | 77.8% | 80 min | 3.49% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 1,338 | 72.8% | 72 min | 2.54% | C |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 37 | 70.6% | 133 min | 8.11% | C− |
| United Airlines | 946 | 68.5% | 74 min | 2.43% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 895 | 58.6% | 114 min | 5.70% | D− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 68 | 41.8% | 75 min | 1.47% | F |
Republic Airways cancels 3.5% 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 37 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am44 flights71.4%
- 8am–11am35 flights79.4%
- 11am–2pm93 flights59.8%
- 2pm–5pm438 flights62.5%
- 5pm–8pm200 flights42.4%
- 8pm–5am85 flights58.7%
Scale runs 35% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 42.4% on time, against 79.4% 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 438 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on CVG to ORD through the year
November is the best month on the calendar at 71.6% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. April was the busiest month here, with 118 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 67.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 51.6%. 16 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 40,000 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 16%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 2.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 39,727 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 79.4% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.70%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 18.9% 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 264 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 63.4% on time across 896 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 895 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 CVG to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.70% 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. 843 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CVG to ORD, every carrier
- SkyWest on ORD to CVG, the return leg
- Republic Airways on CVG to ORD77.8%
- Envoy Air on CVG to ORD72.8%
- United Airlines on CVG to ORD68.5%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.