Carrier route record
OOIND→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Indianapolis to Chicago
- Flights
- 649
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 12%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on IND to ORD draws a C−. About 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 649 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 2,713 at 82.4% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 82.4% on time across 2,713 flights.
Key figures
On time
67.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 607 completed flights
Avg delay
109 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.32%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.5%
Every carrier on IND to ORD, 5,201 flights
These figures cover 649 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.2% 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 IND to ORD
SkyWest flew 649 of the 5,201 flights on IND to ORD, about 12% of it. Its 67.2% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 76.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 82.4% to SkyWest at 67.2%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 82.4% of the time; American Airlines manages 67.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 514 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 2,713 | 82.4% | 70 min | 2.06% | B |
| Envoy Air | 576 | 77.6% | 89 min | 1.91% | B |
| United Airlines | 749 | 67.8% | 82 min | 2.40% | C |
| American Airlines | 514 | 67.3% | 87 min | 6.42% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 649 | 67.2% | 109 min | 6.32% | C− |
American Airlines cancels 6.4% 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 18 points, against 15 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am40 flights61.8%
- 8am–11am90 flights70.7%
- 11am–2pm100 flights69.7%
- 2pm–5pm146 flights72.7%
- 5pm–8pm198 flights65.8%
- 8pm–5am75 flights54.5%
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 54.5% on time, against 72.7% for the 2pm–5pm 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 198 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on IND to ORD through the year
May is the best month on the calendar at 80.4% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. May was the busiest month here, with 96 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 76.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 58.7%. 18 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 22,000 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 23%Extreme weather
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 23% 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 3.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 21,692 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, 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 7,436 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 6.32%, 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. 14.2% 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 177 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 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 69.5% on time across 649 flights, within 2 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. 649 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 IND to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.32% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 2pm–5pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 607 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- IND to ORD, every carrier
- SkyWest on ORD to IND, the return leg
- Republic Airways on IND to ORD82.4%
- Envoy Air on IND to ORD77.6%
- United Airlines on IND to ORD67.8%
- American Airlines on IND to ORD67.3%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Indianapolis International (IND) delay statistics
- 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.