Carrier route record
OOLIT→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Little Rock to Chicago
- Flights
- 437
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 31%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on LIT to ORD draws a D−. Roughly 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 437 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on LIT to ORD runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 166 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
61.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 413 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.81%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.8%
Every carrier on LIT to ORD, 1,404 flights
These figures cover 437 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 LIT to ORD
SkyWest flew 437 of the 1,404 flights on LIT to ORD, about 31% of it. Its 61.0% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 67.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 71.1% 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 | 952 | 71.1% | 68 min | 1.68% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 437 | 61.0% | 91 min | 4.81% | D− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 15 | 50.0% | 86 min | 20.00% | F− |
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 17 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am7 flights—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm243 flights67.4%
- 2pm–5pm46 flights57.8%
- 5pm–8pm141 flights50.0%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 40% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 50.0% on time, against 67.4% for the 11am–2pm 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 243 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on LIT to ORD through the year
October is the best month on the calendar at 70.3% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. August was the busiest month here, with 73 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 75.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 48.3%. 28 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 15,000 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Carrier
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 5,616 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 14,687 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.81%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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
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.
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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.7% on time across 435 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 437 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 4.81% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 413 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.