Carrier route record
OOGRR→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Grand Rapids to Chicago
- Flights
- 837
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 21%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on GRR to ORD carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.2% 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 D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 837 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 532 at 75.6% on time.
American Airlines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 75.6% on time across 532 flights.
Key figures
On time
64.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 809 completed flights
Avg delay
105 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.23%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.3%
Every carrier on GRR to ORD, 4,038 flights
These figures cover 837 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.9% 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 GRR to ORD
SkyWest flew 837 of the 4,038 flights on GRR to ORD, about 21% of it. Its 64.5% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 68.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 75.6% to PSA at 0.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 75.6% of the time; United Airlines manages 65.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,075 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 532 | 75.6% | 133 min | 3.38% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 661 | 70.9% | 76 min | 2.87% | C |
| Envoy Air | 931 | 69.5% | 67 min | 3.65% | C− |
| United Airlines | 1,075 | 65.1% | 73 min | 1.30% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 837 | 64.5% | 105 min | 3.23% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 0.0% | 690 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Envoy Air cancels 3.6% 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 44 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am137 flights88.9%
- 8am–11am112 flights77.7%
- 11am–2pm234 flights66.4%
- 2pm–5pm206 flights50.3%
- 5pm–8pm106 flights48.1%
- 8pm–5am42 flights44.7%
Scale runs 35% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 44.7% on time, against 88.9% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 234 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on GRR to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 43.1% on time, against 83.9% 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. May was the busiest month here, with 138 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 67.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 61.3%. 6 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 30,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Carrier
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 15%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 30,131 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 11,000 of the 30,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.23%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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. 17.9% 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 137 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.8% on time across 838 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 837 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 GRR to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.23% 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. 809 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- GRR to ORD, every carrier
- SkyWest on ORD to GRR, the return leg
- American Airlines on GRR to ORD75.6%
- Republic Airways on GRR to ORD70.9%
- Envoy Air on GRR to ORD69.5%
- United Airlines on GRR to ORD65.1%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- 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.