Carrier route record
OOMCI→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Kansas City to Chicago
- Flights
- 943
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 23%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on MCI to ORD carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.7% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% 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 943 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 570 at 81.8% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 81.8% on time across 570 flights.
Key figures
On time
69.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 908 completed flights
Avg delay
112 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.71%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.7%
Every carrier on MCI to ORD, 4,148 flights
These figures cover 943 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.0% 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 MCI to ORD
SkyWest flew 943 of the 4,148 flights on MCI to ORD, about 23% of it. Its 69.5% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 81.8% to PSA at 51.4%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 81.8% of the time; Envoy Air manages 73.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 819 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 570 | 81.8% | 118 min | 1.58% | B |
| United Airlines | 1,434 | 76.5% | 82 min | 2.02% | B |
| Envoy Air | 819 | 73.8% | 74 min | 3.66% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 342 | 73.5% | 135 min | 2.92% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 943 | 69.5% | 112 min | 3.71% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 40 | 51.4% | 122 min | 7.50% | F− |
Envoy Air cancels 3.7% 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 34 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am133 flights79.4%
- 8am–11am388 flights79.9%
- 11am–2pm118 flights64.7%
- 2pm–5pm130 flights45.6%
- 5pm–8pm151 flights62.9%
- 8pm–5am23 flights—
Scale runs 35% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 79.9% of the time, against 45.6% for the afternoon window. That is 34 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 388 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on MCI to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 54.3% on time, against 90.2% in October. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 159 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 57.9%. 22 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 31,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 12%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 30,950 reported delay minutes.
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 31,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit.
Cancellations run at 3.71%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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. 15.0% 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.
At 403 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 67.9% on time across 945 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. 943 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 MCI to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.71% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 908 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCI to ORD, every carrier
- SkyWest on ORD to MCI, the return leg
- Republic Airways on MCI to ORD81.8%
- United Airlines on MCI to ORD76.5%
- Envoy Air on MCI to ORD73.8%
- American Airlines on MCI to ORD73.5%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.