Carrier route record

OODAY→ORD

SkyWest Airlines · Dayton to Chicago

Flights: 470
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 27%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.

SkyWest on DAY to ORD draws a D−. Roughly 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 470 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on DAY to ORD runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 171 extra late arrivals.

On time

60.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 438 completed flights

Avg delay

102 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

6.81%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

71.9%

Every carrier on DAY to ORD, 1,741 flights

These figures cover 470 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 22.8% 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 DAY to ORD

SkyWest flew 470 of the 1,741 flights on DAY to ORD, about 27% of it. Its 60.5% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 89.2% to SkyWest at 60.5%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on DAY to ORD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airwaysthin sample	103	89.2%	109 min	9.71%	A−
United Airlinesthin sample	69	80.9%	44 min	1.45%	B
Envoy Airthin sample	354	78.8%	77 min	2.82%	B
PSA Airlines	745	72.4%	110 min	4.30%	C−
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	470	60.5%	102 min	6.81%	D−

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 21 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am41 flights74.4%
8am–11am48 flights75.0%
11am–2pm74 flights66.2%
2pm–5pm122 flights54.5%
5pm–8pm185 flights55.2%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 75.0% of the time, against 54.5% for the afternoon window. That is 21 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 185 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on DAY to ORD through the year

Jul–Sep 202535 flights74.2%
Oct–Dec 2025119 flights63.0%
Jan–Mar 2026125 flights56.4%
Apr–Jun 2026191 flights59.3%

Scale runs 50% to 80%. 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 60.5% on time across 470 flights.

SkyWest on DAY to ORD did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 74.2% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 56.4%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 118 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 73.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 42.9%. 30 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 18,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
31%
National Airspace System
30%
Carrier
30%
Extreme weather
9%

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 75.0% on time here. The split is drawn from 17,715 reported delay minutes.

No single cause dominates. late-arriving aircraft at 31%, national airspace system at 30% and carrier at 30% split the 18,000 reported delay minutes between them. An even spread like this usually means the operation is running close to its designed capacity with no one obvious weak point, and it is the hardest pattern for a traveller to route around.

Cancellations run at 6.81%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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. 22.8% 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 240 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 runs 60.7% on time across 469 flights, within half a point 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. 470 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 DAY to ORD

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.81% 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. 438 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures