Carrier route record
OOMEM→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Memphis to Chicago
- Flights
- 835
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 34%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on MEM to ORD sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 835 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 821 at 77.1% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on MEM to ORD runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 45 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 811 completed flights
Avg delay
90 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.28%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.0%
Every carrier on MEM to ORD, 2,473 flights
These figures cover 835 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.8% 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 MEM to ORD
SkyWest flew 835 of the 2,473 flights on MEM to ORD, about 34% of it. Its 73.1% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 76.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.0% to American at 17.6%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 332 | 84.0% | 98 min | 3.61% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 821 | 77.1% | 62 min | 3.05% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 468 | 75.6% | 69 min | 4.70% | B− |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 835 | 73.1% | 90 min | 2.28% | C |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 17 | 17.6% | 121 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Republic Airways cancels 4.7% 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.
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on MEM to ORD
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 41 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am20 flights—
- 8am–11am317 flights81.7%
- 11am–2pm88 flights87.5%
- 2pm–5pm311 flights67.3%
- 5pm–8pm99 flights46.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 46.7% on time, against 87.5% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 317 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on MEM to ORD through the year
June is the worst month at 58.1% on time, 34 points below October, the best at 91.9%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. June was the busiest month here, with 94 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 80.7% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 65.0%. 16 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 20,000 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%National Airspace System
- 25%Carrier
- 10%Extreme weather
37% 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 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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. The split is drawn from 19,677 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 2.28% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.60%.
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. 11.8% 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 491 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 71.8% on time across 832 flights, within about a point 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. 835 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 MEM to ORD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 835 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 73.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 811 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MEM to ORD, every carrier
- SkyWest on ORD to MEM, the return leg
- United Airlines on MEM to ORD84.0%
- Envoy Air on MEM to ORD77.1%
- Republic Airways on MEM to ORD75.6%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.