Carrier route record
OOLEX→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Lexington to Chicago
- Flights
- 1,384
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 81%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on LEX to ORD carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten 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 1,384 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so SkyWest on LEX to ORD runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 49 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,334 completed flights
Avg delay
109 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.47%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
73.3%
Every carrier on LEX to ORD, 1,703 flights
These figures cover 1,384 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on LEX to ORD
SkyWest flew 1,384 of the 1,703 flights on LEX to ORD, most of the route. Its 72.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 73.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 82.6% to SkyWest at 72.4%. Two 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 23 | 82.6% | 82 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 296 | 76.7% | 89 min | 1.35% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 1,384 | 72.4% | 109 min | 3.47% | C− |
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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 25 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am454 flights84.7%
- 8am–11am109 flights81.0%
- 11am–2pm231 flights68.8%
- 2pm–5pm196 flights68.1%
- 5pm–8pm377 flights59.7%
- 8pm–5am17 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.7% on time, against 84.7% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 454 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on LEX to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 50.0% on time, against 81.0% in April. 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. September was the busiest month here, with 206 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 74.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 68.2%, a spread of 7 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late SkyWest on LEX to ORD runs when it is late
SkyWest on LEX to ORD often beats the schedule: 435 of 1,334 completed flights, 33%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When SkyWest on LEX to ORD is late it tends to be very late: 193 of its 368 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 104 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early435 flights32.6%
- Within 15 min531 flights39.8%
- 15–29 min late92 flights6.9%
- 30–59 min late83 flights6.2%
- 1–2 hours late89 flights6.7%
- 2+ hours late104 flights7.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,334 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
45 of 317 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. In the other direction, 96 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at ORD.
The worst days
Worst days for SkyWest on LEX to ORD
The latest arrival of the period was on 31 August 2026, 20 hours 26 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. The five worst days are spread across August, October, June and January, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 31 August 2026 | 20 hours 26 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 19 October 2025 | 20 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 August 2026 | 16 hours 3 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 June 2026 | 14 hours 28 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 21 January 2026 | 12 hours 52 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 43% of the 40,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%Carrier
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%National Airspace System
- 15%Extreme weather
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 39,939 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 17,000 of the 40,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.47%, against 1.89% 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
14.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 323 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 68.5% on time across 1,384 flights, 4 points below 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,384 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 LEX to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.47% 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. 1,334 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.