Carrier route record
OOLIT→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Little Rock to Chicago
- Flights
- 423
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 30%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on LIT to ORD draws a D−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 423 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so SkyWest on LIT to ORD runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 132 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 398 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.44%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
69.6%
Every carrier on LIT to ORD, 1,430 flights
These figures cover 423 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on LIT to ORD
SkyWest flew 423 of the 1,430 flights on LIT to ORD, about 30% of it. Its 64.1% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 72.2% to Republic at 50.0%. One 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 992 | 72.2% | 73 min | 1.92% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 423 | 64.1% | 93 min | 5.44% | D− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 15 | 50.0% | 86 min | 20.00% | F− |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 31 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am48 flights84.4%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm195 flights65.1%
- 2pm–5pm86 flights61.4%
- 5pm–8pm94 flights53.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 53.6% on time, against 84.4% 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 195 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on LIT to ORD through the year
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 56.8%. July is the strongest month at 77.6%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 21 points. July was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 82.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 53.2%, a spread of 29 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late SkyWest on LIT to ORD runs when it is late
The 143 late arrivals split 46 under half an hour, 40 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 57 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early77 flights19.3%
- Within 15 min178 flights44.7%
- 15–29 min late46 flights11.6%
- 30–59 min late40 flights10.1%
- 1–2 hours late25 flights6.3%
- 2+ hours late32 flights8.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 398 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 124 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 13 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 32 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 LIT to ORD
The latest arrival of the period was on 1 December 2025, 23 hours 8 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 1 December 2025 | 23 hours 8 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 June 2026 | 17 hours | Carrier |
| 22 February 2026 | 10 hours 17 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 November 2025 | 4 hours 27 minutes | Carrier |
| 10 November 2025 | 4 hours 7 minutes | National Airspace System |
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 13,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Carrier
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,988 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 13,230 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 84.4% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.44%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty 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
14.3% 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.
The 552 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.4% on time across 421 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 423 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 LIT to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.44% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 398 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.