Carrier route record
OODSM→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Des Moines to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,167
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 34%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on DSM to ORD carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 6.1% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three 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 1,167 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 565 at 77.9% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 77.9% on time across 565 flights.
Key figures
On time
66.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,096 completed flights
Avg delay
116 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.08%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.1%
Every carrier on DSM to ORD, 3,403 flights
These figures cover 1,167 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.0% 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 DSM to ORD
SkyWest flew 1,167 of the 3,403 flights on DSM to ORD, about 34% of it. Its 66.6% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 84.7% to PSA at 0.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 5 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 263 | 84.7% | 145 min | 5.70% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 565 | 77.9% | 85 min | 4.60% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 464 | 76.9% | 72 min | 2.59% | B |
| United Airlines | 943 | 73.2% | 78 min | 1.70% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 1,167 | 66.6% | 116 min | 6.08% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 0.0% | 184 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Republic Airways cancels 4.6% 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 38 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am95 flights91.0%
- 8am–11am297 flights79.4%
- 11am–2pm171 flights69.3%
- 2pm–5pm119 flights66.1%
- 5pm–8pm483 flights52.6%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 52.6% on time, against 91.0% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 483 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on DSM to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 52.0% on time, against 82.1% in November. 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 148 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 71.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.4%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 43% of the 42,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 43%Carrier
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%Extreme weather
- 14%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 17% 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 2.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 42,405 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, 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 18,000 of the 42,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 6.08%, 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. 16.0% 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 299 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 67.0% on time across 1,168 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,167 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking SkyWest on DSM to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.08% 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. 1,096 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DSM to ORD, every carrier
- SkyWest on ORD to DSM, the return leg
- American Airlines on DSM to ORD84.7%
- Republic Airways on DSM to ORD77.9%
- Envoy Air on DSM to ORD76.9%
- United Airlines on DSM to ORD73.2%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.