Carrier route record
OOMSP→ORD
SkyWest Airlines · Minneapolis to Chicago
- Flights
- 704
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- Carriers
- 8
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on MSP to ORD draws a C−. 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 704 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 532 at 76.1% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 76.1% on time across 532 flights.
Key figures
On time
67.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 678 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.41%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.9%
Every carrier on MSP to ORD, 6,324 flights
These figures cover 704 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.6% 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 MSP to ORD
SkyWest flew 704 of the 6,324 flights on MSP to ORD, about 11% of it. Its 67.6% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of eight carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 76.1% to Frontier at 41.7%. Three 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 76.1% of the time; Delta Air Lines manages 67.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,412 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 532 | 76.1% | 87 min | 6.58% | B− |
| Envoy Air | 1,084 | 74.0% | 72 min | 2.86% | C |
| United Airlines | 2,398 | 69.7% | 84 min | 1.38% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 704 | 67.6% | 93 min | 3.41% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,412 | 67.3% | 66 min | 1.84% | C |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 138 | 65.0% | 128 min | 0.72% | C+ |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 43 | 54.8% | 79 min | 2.33% | F |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 13 | 41.7% | 85 min | 7.69% | F− |
Republic Airways cancels 6.6% 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 29 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am51 flights82.4%
- 8am–11am185 flights73.6%
- 11am–2pm186 flights61.7%
- 2pm–5pm31 flights53.3%
- 5pm–8pm172 flights65.9%
- 8pm–5am79 flights66.2%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 82.4% of the time, against 53.3% for the afternoon window. That is 29 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 186 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on MSP to ORD through the year
December is the weak month at 50.7% on time, against 85.0% in September. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 122 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 73.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 53.7%. 20 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 46% of the 20,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 46%Carrier
- 29%National Airspace System
- 20%Extreme weather
- 5%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 20% 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 3.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 20,366 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, 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 9,399 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.41%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 15.6% 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 334 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 runs 67.1% on time across 702 flights, within half 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. 704 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 MSP to ORD
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.41% 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. 678 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to ORD, every carrier
- SkyWest on ORD to MSP, the return leg
- Republic Airways on MSP to ORD76.1%
- Envoy Air on MSP to ORD74.0%
- United Airlines on MSP to ORD69.7%
- Delta Air Lines on MSP to ORD67.3%
- American Airlines on MSP to ORD65.0%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.